RKS Literature: The Younger Brother (James Baldwin)

“I think it may be easier to love the really helpless younger brother because he cannot enter into competition with one on one’s own ground, or on any ground at all, and can never question one’s role, or jeopardize one’s authority. In my own case, certainly, it did not occur to me until much later-to compete with Caleb. I could not have questioned his role or authority because I needed both. He was my touchstone, my model, and my only guide. But there is always, on the other hand, something in a younger brother which eventually comes to resent this. The day comes when he is wiling to destroy his older brother simply because he had depended on him so long. The day comes when he recognizes what a combination of helplessness, and hard-hearted calculation go into the creation of the role, and to what extent authority is a delicate, difficult, deadly game of chance.”

James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.

RKS Health: The Great Hernia Adventure: Recovery from Inguinal Hernia Surgery: PAIN AND SUFFERING

There would seem some consensus as to some of the temporal aspects of pain after inguinal hernia surgery and the bottom-line conclusion of expect some pain is not debatable! What is not so easily ascertained is the length and severity of the pain.

Pain is a relative concept. The degree of pain experienced by those in the Hernia Club graduating from inguinal hernia surgery differs based on many circumstances. How adept and experienced was your surgeon, your individual tolerance, your physical condition, your age and your mental approach to pain and suffering?

I have yet to encounter any commentary to the effect you jump off your bed post surgery pain free. The conventional wisdom is day one you are numbed out with anesthesia and perhaps some opioid relief immediately after surgery. Day two and three are supposedly the worst it is going to get and gradually by week six you are close to normal. You will discover the veracity of these pain generalizations. Odds are with the passage of time pain lessens but how quickly only you will discover. If it worsens time to contact your surgeon.

It may not be the case a younger person with a buff physique hop, skips and jumps through “the ring of fire”. The cut through a flabby body may be less of a shock to the body!

If you have experience with pain it perhaps you bear it better than a novice to pain.

As for pain avoidance after inguinal hernia surgery there are no free passes. There are pain management techniques.

RKS Literature: Your White Skin is the Problem (Andrea Levy)

“You know what your trouble is man?’ he said. ‘Your white skin. You think it makes you better than me. You think it give you the right to lord over a black man. But you know what it make you, man? It make you white. That is all, man. White. No better or worse than me-just white.”  

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Literature: A Venereal Gift From Calcutta (Andrea Levy)

“In the light of day, locked behind a toilet door, the enormous throbbing sore had produced a hat of pus. I felt it pop like a grape in my pants as I sat down to another meal of potato and sausage. It was ringed with a blue line clear as if drawn with a pencil. Once I saw its seeping pus matted into my pubic hair. And the next time I wrapped the sore in a bandage. It was unbearably itchy and clammy inside this wrapping. And useless-a small spot of yellow brown muck had soon stained it through. When I eventually unwrapped it, the bandage clung like paper to a sticky toffee. I bit the leather of my belt to stop me yelling out. I knew what this angry pustule on my penis was.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

RKS Literature: Syphilis WWII Style?

“The medical officer, on the boat when we first came out east, had warned us RAF recruits. Ulcers, inflammations, colourful discharge, swellings. All the result of sexual relations with the wrong type. He’d given us lectures. Colourful pictures were passed around. Lurid photographs. Quite shocking. Parts of the body unrecognizable as human. Turned some of the chaps a sorry shade of grey. Had them worried. Frowning. Thinking back. Stopped their bragging. One of them I recall, fainted-blamed seasickness. ‘Always use this, the MO had said. Took a sheath out of his pocket. Waved it around in the air.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.

CBC On Design: And You Thought Watching Cement Dry Was Not Exciting! Think Again After Watching “How to Design With Concrete”

A new digital series CBC ON DESIGN launches on 4July2025 with a new episode weekly. In five 15-minute episodes, the CBC Arts Original Series explores how an industrial designer’s idea evolves to become a product in your home.

The series begins with CONCRETE featuring Montreal designers Matt and Shawna Heide founders of CONCRETE CAT. Matt explains how concrete is perceived as an industrial product mostly rough and grey. Many are caught by surprise by the artistic creations of the Heide’s full of colour and shapes so unconcretish!

Concrete Cat’s Octavia Max Bowl ($1187 CDN)

It is a tactile process working with powdered concrete, mixing vibrant colours into it, placing it a mold, drying and demolding. The colours in the finished objet d’arts are stunning bringing to life concrete and rescuing it from its boring and utilitarian prison.

Excellent laid-back narration by Jordan Bloeman.

You can watch on CBC GEM and YOUTUBE.

RKS 2025 Wine: Back to Toronto and “Fancy” Sicilian Wine: Planeta’s 2020 Controdanza

Having spent two weeks in Sicily in May very little wine was consumed. My agenda was tourism this time and not wine tourism.

The best wine I had in Sicily?  Small batch Primitivo produced in the countryside proximate to the archaeological site of Villa Romana del Casale served with lunch in large jugs sourced from demijohns. As one of the world’s humblest and respected wine writers I was given a 1.5 litre water bottle filled with it with accompanying advice to drink within a few days unless kept chilled which would extend its life. Organic without being labelled organic from a fancy bottle. I have had similar wines from roadside stands in Tuscany and on farms in the Azores.

Excellent wine in a most humble vessel: Photo Robert K. Stephen

Well, no Sicilian wine in water bottles now that I have returned to Toronto. Back to bottled wine. Sigh!

This wine is from Planeta one of Sicily’s most globally respected wineries. The wine is Sicilia Noto DOC. The DOC was established in 1986. 85% Nero d’Avola and 15% Merlot. Lime marl soil with small amounts of light-coloured chalk. Grown at 50-70 meters above sea level. Aged 12 months in 4th and 5th usage Allier oak. Certified sustainable winery.

Aroma: Raspberry, cactus pear, milk chocolate and a touch of prune.

Palate: Raspberry, bright red cherry and ripe strawberry. Oak way in the back of the hall barely perceptible. Mounting tannins yet not a tannic wine. Spicy and moderately long finish with a Mini-ME sweetness. And yes there is Merlot in this wine softening it somewhat!

Personality: Serious and even tempered.

Food Match: Sicilian Caponata, Sicilian farm sausage and fried potatoes.

Cellarbility: Interesting evolution through to 2030.

Price: $25 CDN.

RKS 2025 Wine Rating: 91/100. Wine Spectator 90.

(Planeta 2020 Controdanza, Sicilia Noto DOC, Menfi, Italy, 750 mL,14%).

RKS 2025 Film: “Dogtooth”: 4K Restoration Opens North America 4July2025

The breakout 2009 Yorgos Lanthimos film “Dogtooth” commences a North American theatrical release in a 4K restoration format.

Parents confine their three adult children in a family compound in a state of childlike innocence through manipulation, violence and abuse. Sexual perversion including incest is omnipresent. Outrageous falsehoods and childlike games and contests preoccupy the adult children. The children are nameless. About the only contact with the outside world for the children is watching planes flying overhead and with a security guard employed at their father’s factory who offers sexual services to the children in the family compound.

The film has carried the banner of absurdity for some time and indeed it has a deep streak of that nature throughout. But it is not so absurd that it obfuscates the plot and the messages of the film if your mind is expansive enough to “rationalize” and “intellectualize” what transpires on the screen.

What you may wish to think about as you watch the film. Think of the three children as society as a whole and the film’s message becomes clearer:

  • Reality is what you are conditioned to perceive. A daughter at the dinner table asks for the telephone to be passed to her. She has been taught that a telephone is a saltshaker.
  • Economic systems manipulate workers. Factory owner father hires a plant security guard to provide sexual services for his children. Exploitative.
  • What “normal sexuality” is how it is “taught”. The sexual games and practices in “Dogtooth” are perverse. The children are so conditioned one wonders if they understand the concept of sexuality. Incest and incest like behaviour is encouraged by the parents. A cornerstone of child sexual abuse is having the victim believe the abuse is normal.
  • Psychological and physical violence are a means of control. The parents create a version of the exterior world as dangerous and only when a child’s dogtooth falls out and is regrown (never) will the parents permit their children to participate in the exterior world. Vicious man-eating housecats await you beyond the family compound!
  • Lies, mistruths, lack of intellectual freedom and threats are a means of control.
  • Think of an analogy to Adam and Eve. Will she open the car trunk?
  • Repression and manipulation are not foolproof. Rebellion (or is it curiosity) may raise its head. Curiosity killed that cat.

Intellectual analysis particularly metaphorically gives you excellent MPG on this film.

But..why do the parents raise their children in a sea of ignorance?

The shock value is tremendous but it shouldn’t take you off the scent there are numerous messages that transcend its seemingly bizarre plot.

The trailer can be watched here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Kh7-WIWF0

In Greek with English subtitles.

RKS 2025 Film Rating: 94/100.

RKS Literature: Loving the Helpless Younger Brother (James Baldwin)

“I think it may be easier to love the really helpless younger brother because he cannot enter into competition with one’s own ground, or on any ground at all, and can never question one’s role, or jeopardize one’s authority. In my own case, certainly, it did not occur to me until much later-to compete with Caleb and I could not have questioned his role or authority because I needed both.”

James Baldwin, “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone”, 1968.

RKS Literature: England Needed to Keep the Rioting Muslims and Hindus Under Control! (Andrea Levy)

“Thousands were killed in Calcutta. Men, women, children, even suckling babies. They called it a riot. Those of us who’d been in the thick of things with these bloodthirsty little men knew it was more than that. Muslims butchering Hindus. Hindus butchering Muslims. And who knows whose side the Sikhs were on? Rumour said the wounded were too many to count, the dead too many to be buried. They were fighting for who should have power when a new independent India comes. Made me smile to think of that ragged bunch of illiterates wanting to run their own country. The British out of India? Only British troops could keep those coolies under control.”

Andrea Levy, “Small Island”, 2003.