• If you like the artist Edward Hopper as much as I do, you might enjoy this article in The Guardian about an upcoming documentary film, “Artist of ‘loneliness’ Edward Hopper depended on his wife, says film-maker.” “Hopper: An American Love Story” will be in theaters on October 18th. According to the article, “Hopper himself relished solitude, preferring a hermit-like existence – albeit with his wife, Josephine Nivison Hopper, also an artist – to social gatherings. The volatile relationship between the laconic Ed and the spirited but resentful Jo is at the heart of a new documentary film made by the British director Phil Grabsky, opening in cinemas this month.”
• If you subscribe to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, you’ll find the concept running front and center through Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library which I’ve been re-reading this week. Imagine that, instead of dying, you end up in a library with an infinite number of books about your probable lives. These books will lead you to samples of other lives you could be living, mainly when you give up the regrets you’ve accumulated in your current life. Interesting premise for a novel. I think there’s a bit of a flaw in the library’s system, but pointing it out here might be a bit of a spoiler. Read. and hope for the best.
• My wife is now in that limbo period between her cataract surgery (on Wednesday) and the time when the eye has healed up enough for her to get a new prescription. Right now, she has a plain glass lens in her glasses since her previous prescription wouldn’t work with her “new eye.” She says her vision is much better out of that eye even though seeing things clearly has a bit of weirdness to it. I know what she means since I went through all this several years ago.
• As a pacifist, I really shouldn’t say this, but I think the world would be a whole lot safer if Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin met with an unfortunate “accident.” Maybe Abby and Martha, the aunts in “Arsenic and Old Lace” can invite him over for spiked “elderberry wine.”

–Malcolm