Perstonal shtuff    I went to Barnes & Noble and spent more money than I should have (which is, alas, any at all). The coffee-table book The Kiss: A Romantic Treasury was on the clearance rack. Very sweet photo book.

   

I also got all three of Edward Gorey’s Amphigorey com­pi­la­tions. In case any­one was won­der­ing, my pro­file pic is a fa­mous Gorey cha­rac­ter, the Doubt­ful Guest. Here’s the tale (hoping that the Gorey estate doesn’t come down on my ass):

  

The Doubtful Guest    by Edward Gorey

When they answered the bell on that wild winter night,
There was no one expected — and no one in sight.

Then they saw something standing on top of an urn,
Whose peculiar appearance gave them quite a turn.

All at once it leapt down and ran into the hall,
Where it chose to remain with its nose to the wall.
It was seemingly deaf to whatever they said,
So at last they stopped screaming, and went off to bed.
It joined them at breakfast and presently ate
All the syrup and toast, and a part of a plate.
It wrenched off the horn from the new gramophone,
And could not be persuaded to leave it alone.
It betrayed a great liking for peering up flues,
And for peeling the soles of its white canvas shoes.
At times it would tear out whole chapters from books,
Or put roomfuls of pictures askew on their hooks.
Every Sunday it brooded and lay on the floor,
Inconveniently close to the drawing-room door.
Now and then it would vanish for hours from the scene,
But alas, be discovered inside a tureen.
It was subject to fits of bewildering wrath,
During which it would hide all the towels from the bath.
In the night through the house it would aimlessly creep,
In spite of the fact of its being asleep.
It would carry off objects of which it grew fond,
And protect them by dropping them into the pond.
It came seventeen years ago — and to this day
It has shown no intention of going away.
 

Mr. Gorey was a rather cute fellow in his youth … Harvard roommate of Frank O’Hara and so forth … 

The Classic Dames Test    I knew it

Katharine Hepburn You scored 23 grit, 9 wit, 52 flair, and 23 class!

You are the fabulously quirky and independent woman of character. You go your own way, follow your own drummer, take your own lead. You stand head and shoulders next to your partner, but you are perfectly willing and able to stand alone. Others might be more classically beautiful or conventionally woman-like, but you possess a more fundamental common sense and off-kilter charm, making interesting men fall at your feet. You can pick them up or leave them there as you see fit. You share the screen with the likes of Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, thinking men who like strong women.

My test tracked 4 variables. How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 0% on grit You scored higher than 0% on wit You scored higher than 99% on flair You scored higher than 0% on class

Link: The Classic Dames Test written by gidgetgoes on OkCupid Free Online Dating

10 fictional characters    who(se rep­re­sen­ta­tives) I would like to, er, wake up next to. This is tough since I don’t watch much TV or mo­vies, and when I’m not be­hind on the cur­rent hot ta­ma­les I usu­al­ly know about them main­ly by name. Also, I figure that Hay­den and Or­lan­do and Jude and the rest are well-rep­re­sen­ted on other lists, and I want­ed to in­clude de­ser­ving folks from off the beat­en path. So here goes (in no par­ti­cu­lar order):

Steve Burton    Most well-known as General Hospital‘s Jason Quar­ter­maine. I think he was in a Law and Or­der as well.
 

Rupert Everett    Rupert played Sher­lock Hol­mes in a re­cent BBC pro­duc­tion. Je&shyre­my Brett will al­ways be the de­fi­ni­tive Holmes, but Rupert gave it a pret­ty good go.

Cillian Murphy    Was very ap­peal­ing as the Amer­i­can-en­gi­neer-with-a-past Paul Mon­ta­gue in Master­piece Theatre‘s pro­duc­tion of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now. Bright-eyed boys catch my at­ten­tion (light eye color is a no­vel­ty among my kind), es­pe­cial­ly when the eyes are set off by dark hair.

Ioan Gruffud    That’s “Yo-an Grif-fith,” who play­ed Pip in Great Ex­pec­ta­tions, Ho­ra­tio Horn­blow­er, and now Rex Reed in The Fan­tas­tic Four. Scrump­tious Welsh­man.

Stratos Tzortzoglou    Not sure how to pro­nounce that one, and he’s cer­tain­ly not wide­ly known. He seems to be pop­u­lar in Greek ci­ne­ma, and he was scrump­tious as Ores­tes in Theo Angel­o­pou­los’s Land­scape in the Mist, one of my all-time fave mo­vies. Stratos is a sort that makes me sa­li­vate, lu­bri­cate, and do other ge­ne­ral­ly wet things.

Billy Crudup    I most re­cent­ly saw him as FH in Jesus’s Son, but he’s done all sorts of things. An­other very ver­sa­tile actor.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers    Jona­than was kind of nice as the kit­chen lad in Gor­men­ghast.

Daniel Day-Lewis    In Hanif Kourishi’s My Beau­ti­ful Laun­drette, of course. I like to im­a­gine Kezia and Paddy as sort of like those two.

… and two “frictional” characters    That’s eight, and now I have to reach a lit­tle to fi­nish the as­sign­ment. There’s a very pe­cu­liar str8 porn I own (the only str8 porn I own) called Im­mortal De­sire, pro­duced by Vivid. It sup­po­sed­ly won ac­claim at the AVN awards, the stroke-and-did­dle flick in­dus­try’s equiv­a­lent of the MPAA awards. The plot (such as it is, and such as I can fi­gure it out) is that cen­turies ago a pair of lovers, An­na and Ga­briel, made a blood pact to be to­ge­ther for­ever, which as­sured them eter­nal life—but not ne­ces­sa­ri­ly eter­nal love, and the cou­ple have been doom­ed since then to be re­born and seek one an­other out end­less­ly. Which of course is just an ex­cuse to show scenes of all sorts of cou­ples in all sorts of set­tings f*cking—scenes which im­pose them­selves on the cur­rent in­car­na­tion of Anna as fever­ish, ero­tic, mid­night dreams, from which she wakes up con­fused and dis­traught and breath­less, her am­ple bo­som heav­ing in her dis­he­vel­ed ne­gli­gée. This film is down­right weird. It’s very slick in terms of pro­duc­tion qua­li­ty, to the ex­tent that this ac­tual­ly makes up for the near-com­plete lack of plot and act­ing abi­li­ty that one usual­ly finds in porn. The thing works (at least vi­su­al­ly)! It’s also very creepy—lots of occult/voo­doo, ul­ti­mate­ly in sup­port of some mild kink. 

“Tony Tedeschi” plays an in­car­na­tion of Ga­briel as a WWI soldier in Ver­dun who, just be­fore he’s blown to bits by a shell, re­mi­nis­ces about the hot f*ck he had with nurse Julia in a field hos­pi­tal while con­va­les­cing from an in­jury.

Either that head wound wasn’t so serious, or Anna/Julia was an aw­ful pri­mary care pro­vi­der in that life. I mean, what if he had croak­ed dur­ing that vi­go­rous screw? Then again, lia­bi­li­ty wasn’t such a big thing back in those days, and you only live—well, for­ever … okay.

At the end of the film, Anna final­ly real­izes what her dreams mean and who she is, and ma­na­ges to shack up with Gabriel again, who is play­ed by the very apt­ly named “Gerry Pike.” There’s no close frame of Anna ser­vi­cing Pike’s pike that I can show because it’s never en­tire­ly out of view.

Of course they had to be taken from one another in their first life (and their sub­se­quent lives), in the usu­al Faust­ian way.

One of the film’s odd­ly refin­ed touch­es is that it ends with a ten­der scene of the two lovers before any of this su­per­na­tu­ral mis­for­tune takes place.

Thanks, Flipper    for mak­ing me waste a cou­ple of pre­cious hours of my life! Se­ri­ous­ly, I can’t think of a more ami­able way to waste time. I guess there seems to be a “type” that I like, huh? I here­by tag any­body who feels like in­dul­ging them­selves in this ex­er­cise, but sin­gle out bobg in the hopes that he’s still stomp­ing on the ol’ Savoy and hang­ing around here some­where.

Quote    One must still have chaos in one­self to be able to give birth to a dan­cing star. —Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Poem

Touch Me Stanley Kunitz Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that’s late, it is my song that’s flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and like a child again marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour from such a small machine. What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. One season only, and it’s done. So let the battered old willow thrash against the windowpanes and the house timbers creak. Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.

Conversation with Stanley Kunitz
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec00/kunitz.html

Wordplay    A Google search on “Ars Magna” will yield the source code for at least one ver­sion of the Ars Magna soft­ware. The com­ments in it tell where to find out more about the de­sign.

Artificial Intelligence
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/opinion/18morton.html

By MIKE MORTON and SABRA MORTON

WHEN we hear grumbling coming from the depths of our computer, we know that Ars Magna, the software program that always answers in anagrams, is awake and worrying.

This software sometimes can seem opinionated. Lately, for instance, it speaks happily of the Statue of Liberty as “built to stay free,” but when it hears the name George W. Bush, it’s likely to cry, “He grew bogus!” Ars is still angry about that C.I.A. leak.

So, Ars, it all began when Karl Rove, as he tells it, did not say the name of Valerie Plame. What do you think he was trying to do when he didn’t name her?

Reveal. Impale.

Well, then, what did he achieve by not naming Valerie Wilson?

Orwellian vise.

But Mr. Rove is President Bush’s key political advisor. Can’t we depend on him to be truthful?

Leaky; solicit avid pro.

By which you mean Robert Novak, who is believed to have helped him expose Ms. Plame? What’s Mr. Novak’s job in this affair just now?

Bark: “Not Rove!”

Lately, Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush’s press secretary, likes to say at news conferences, “I appreciate the question.” What do you think he means?

Riot technique: appease it.

Ars, for more than two years we’ve heard accusations and denials and hours of commentary on this business. Do you have any idea what actually happened? Can you figure out who said what to whom, when?

Them want who? How?
What who? Now them?

Our thoughts exactly. But perhaps the full truth will be, uh, revealed. After all, Mr. Bush says he has instructed his staff that when the prosecutor comes calling, they’re to fully cooperate. How do you read that?

Leery: coup aloft.

In the past, Mr. Bush said that anyone in his administration who exposes a C.I.A. agent will be fired. What might he say now?

“I’d … well … brief …”

And if Mr. Bush is asked to fire Karl Rove?

“Karl … forever … I …”

What advice would you give Karl Rove today?

“Lark OVER!”

And what will President George Bush do now?

He ponders big gesture.

Ah yes, his nomination to the Supreme Court. We’ll get back to you on that one, Ars.

Mike Morton is a software engineer and the creator of Ars Magna. Sabra Morton is a writer.

Song I can’t get out of my head    “Oronico Flow,” Enya.

Existential angst    The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by. —Chuang-tzu

Give Bush hell    Not to fix­ate on this or any­thing (what—me, ob­ses­sive? ) but as it would hap­pen to­day’s Times Op-Ed page has some words of wis­dom by way of the Em­er­ald Isle, from an Irish-Am­er­i­can with the pers­pec­tive that comes with that her­i­tage.

Left Behind
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/opinion/17lynch.html

And may­be […] the part I find most dis­tan­cing about my pre­si­dent, [is] not his fa­na­tic heart — the un­as­sail­able sense he pro­jects that God is on his side — we all have that. But that he seems to lack any­thing like real re­morse, here in the third Au­gust of Iraq, in the fourth Au­gust of Af­ghan­is­tan, in the fifth Au­gust of his pre­si­den­cy — for all of the in­tem­per­ate speech, for the wea­pons of mass de­struc­tion that were not there, the “Mis­sion Ac­com­plish­ed” that real­ly wasn’t, for the fu­ner­als he will not at­tend, the mo­thers of the dead he will not speak to, the bo­dies of the dead we are not al­low­ed to see and all of the sol­diers and ci­vil­ians whose lives have been ir­re­triev­ably lost or ir­re­pa­ra­bly chang­ed by his (and our) “Bring it On” bra­va­do in a world made more pe­ri­lous by such pro­nounce­ments.

There was also yet an­other high-pro­file apo­lo­gist with a sin­cere but worth­less defense. Edmund Morris (who, like Shrub, fa­mous­ly acted out his fan­ta­sies once, in his bio-memoir of Ron­ald Rea­gan, Dutch) jus­ti­fies ig­nor­ing Shee­han and the pro­test­ers in Craw­ford this way: “A pre­si­dent has to pro­tect him­self from emo­tion­al pred­a­tors, or he’d be suck­ed dry with­in a week of tak­ing office.” That says it all: the piece is not worth read­ing.

Biking Toward Nowhere
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/opinion/17dowd.html

Give Bush hell    I read Hitchens’s Slate ed­i­to­ri­al on Cindy Sheehan, and it’s not worth read­ing. I could pro­ba­bly say a lot about it but I’ll li­mit my­self to this: Sheehan has no solid po­li­cy position that I can see; the value of her effort and those of the others in Craw­ford is in forc­ing the real ques­tion: why and how did we get into Iraq, and what are we going to do about it now? That Hitchens has to jux­ta­pose Sheehan’s nai­ve­té with Maureen Dowd’s po­le­mic to create a straw man “de­mon­strat­ing” that Bush is “right to ig­nore” Ms. Sheehan speaks vol­umes about his screed, whether he real­i­zes it or not. Any­body, what­ever their sym­pa­thies, with a sound reas­on­ing fa­cul­ty should be able to re­cog­nize this rhe­to­ri­cal ma­neu­ver for what it is. I don’t know whe­ther to be piss­ed off at Hitchens for try­ing to fob off this kind of bull­shit on me instead of pro­vi­ding a real ar­gu­ment—which I ul­ti­mate­ly may not sup­port, but can­not avoid gi­ving cre­dit to (and there have been such ar­gu­ments)—or whe­ther to be sor­ry for him for sink­ing to this de­cep­tion/self-de­ce­ption. I’m lean­ing to­ward the first, though.

Perstonal shtuff    It’s undeniable—I’ve had a bout of the blahs for a few days now. I guess it’s not time to cut back on the meds yet. I put some pic­tures of me in that mood in the last long post, to break up the mo­no­tony of the text. Thank gosh the heat has bro­ken and we fi­nal­ly have some bear­able wea­ther—that sure­ly wasn’t help­ing any­thing. I went shop­ping this even­ing, in­ten­ding just to get some more sau­sage to make sand­wiches and some other odds and ends, but it looks like I now have most of the fix­ings for to­mato sauce for pasta. It’s been soooo long since I’ve done that! I don’t think I can get to it to­night, but cer­tain­ly to­mor­row. Right now I’m just mak­ing some split-pea soup with bar­ley, and a smok­ed ham hock. It looks like it will be a night up to get some free­lance work done to take in, in the morn­ing, along with some near­ly due in­voices and stuff …

Give Bush hell    So Mr. “Bring ‘Em On!” in fact has not the p.r. smarts, nor the abil­ity, nor the co­jones, nor the sim­ple de­cen­cy to ac­tu­al­ly en­gage real ques­tions on a re­spect­ful yet ad­ver­sa­ri­al ba­sis from the plain ol’ folks, of whom he claims to be one. I have to think back to his stage-managed state visit to Ire­land—which must be the most pro-American place in Europe—where he still had to be kept away from real peo­ple be­cause of the pro­tests, and to the in­so­lence of that woman jour­nal­ist who dared to chal­lenge him in her inter­view while he was there. You can get away with it abroad, Dubya, but you have no Po­tem­kin villages to live in here at home—not for much long­er, any­way. “The haves—and the have-mores”—ha ha, that was rich, wasn’t it?—but they’re not the only ones you have to ans­wer to, my good man (not yet, any­way, and thank hea­vens for that, and may it ever stay that way).

Bush Neighbor Lets War Protesters Use Land
http://www.insightbb.com/story.aspx?doc=/XML/1110_AP_Online_Regional_-_National_(US)/10289d69-ea24-4045-a632-099da7a24a0b.xml

Parents of Fallen Marine Make Plea to Bush
http://www.insightbb.com/story.aspx?doc=/XML/1110_AP_Online_Regional_-_National_(US)/0ddcd6e6-558e-43bb-aa76-744208c85565.xml

Frank Rich has his usual in­sights into the broad­er tenor of the mat­ter, un­ig­nor­able even if one doesn’t share his sym­pathies.

Someone Tell the President the War Is Over
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/14/opinion/14rich.html

I do have to con­fess, though, that haven’t been able to bring my­self to read Christopher Hitchens’s Slate piece yet, even though I should, in the in­ter­ests of broad-mind­ed­ness and all that good stuff.

Perstonal shtuff    I haven’t forgotten that I’ve been tagged to do a top-10 who-to-wake-up-with list … just still thinkin’ and plannin’.

Xanga    I was look­ing over my Xanga. I haven’t had it for long enough to see per­so­nal changes re­flec­ted in it, but I guess it shows how my own in­te­rest in it has grown. I start­ed it most­ly just to keep up with biggles and com­pany, but over time I’ve de­ci­ded on lay­out and topics, and be­gun to ex­pe­ri­ment with using images. I’m bold­er with it than I would ever have ima­gined. Hard­ly any­body reads it, but that’s just fine by me: jour­nals should be for their crea­tor first and for others se­cond. In look­ing it over I get a lit­tle of the feel­ing one gets in re-read­ing the jour­nal our eighth-grade English teacher made us keep, the one graded solely on quan­tity, simply to en­cou­rage the ha­bit of wri­ting: even the en­tries that are like “I can’t think of any­thing to write. I can’t think of any­thing to write” over and over to ful­lfil the re­quire­ment are fa­sci­na­ting to see. There’s also the un­easi­ness of meet­ing your­self: I don’t think I come across as par­ti­cu­lar­ly like­able; I’m not sure that I’d warm up im­me­di­ate­ly to some­one who writes like this, at any rate.

Dream    This mor­ning I had a dream that left me ra­ther sha­ken on awa­ken­ing. It was an or­di­nary dream, not weird at all. I was back in my old uni­ver­sity de­part­ment, tak­ing care of start-of-the-semes­ter things: mov­ing into new teach­ing offices, work­ing out gra­du­ate ad­vi­sing and semi­nar schedules. The normal­cy of the dream was no­ta­ble, con­si­der­ing that this period of my life was the long­est, most un­pleas­ant, stres­sful, and ul­ti­mate­ly waste­ful one.

Col­lege ad­mis­sions officers have no­ticed that in the last de­cade or two, pres­sure has grown enor­mous­ly on high school stu­dents ap­ply­ing to premier col­leges to load up with com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, extra­cur­ri­cu­lars, and jobs so as to have kil­ler cre­den­tials and ap­pli­ca­tions. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, more new fresh­men are ar­ri­ving on cam­pus al­ready burn­ed out men­tal­ly and psy­chi­cal­ly, as pure blobs of emo­tion, to the point where the long-lost prac­tice of tak­ing a year or two off before col­lege to see the world is once more being en­cour­aged. I can re­late to that ex­pe­ri­ence; it just didn’t hap­pen to me until grad school. I also had other bag­gage too.

Where’d this dream come from? My old ad­vi­sor thinks that I be­long in aca­de­mia—that it’s my na­tu­ral habitat—and hence I shouldn’t give up on an ad­vanced degree. But I’ve de­ve­lop­ed cer­tain doubts, about my own where­withal to ever finish that PhD and about aca­demic career­ism. Is my sub­con­scious send­ing me a mes­sage of some kind, that I may (almost) be ready to face cer­tain si­tu­a­tions again? This dream didn’t have the usual needling aspect, of rub­bing my nose in my de­fi­cien­cies.

The dream had a bunch of in­ter­es­ting de­tails in it. There was a fel­low for whom I had a bit of a thing before. I doubt I’d be much in­ter­es­ted in him now; he was a bit im­ma­ture (but then again, so was I), and I think he was ca­pa­ble of en­joy­ing m/m desire but not pre­pared to ad­mit it to him­self. In the dream we ran into each other while he was show­ing his new wife around; they had an in­fant child in their arms, and we ig­nored each other. Go figure. Also, in my new TA office, the pre­vious oc­cu­pants had left a bunch of board games and stuff; one of them was an old set of mul­ti­ple chess­boards and chess pieces manu­fac­tured by Parker for mul­ti­player, mul­ti­di­men­sion­al chess. Very sleek, fu­tur­is­tic glass sets; the pawns were oval peb­bles, like Pente pieces; the other pieces (the knights in par­ti­cu­lar) were sty­lized el­lip­soi­dal fig­ures; and the box de­sign was very avant-garde, all sans-serif type­faces and mod­ern grid-style lay­out. Finally, I was try­ing to make head­way, while being dis­trac­ted by mov­ing and meet­ings, in a vol­ume about the lin­guis­tic struc­ture of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. I think I know where that de­tail comes from, though.

L’apéritif    The aper­i­tif dis­cus­sion on biggles’s jour­nal de­serves poin­ting out. I think we’ve got us the de­fi­ni­tive Kir des­crip­tion there.

I’ve got this mar­ve­lous book Aper­i­tif: Re­ci­pes for sim­ple plea­sures in the French style by Georgeanne Brennan that talks about mix­ed drinks made with liqueurs and stuff, to be tip­pled in small doses, sa­vor­ed with nuts and olives and stuff, over good con­ver­sa­tion … The book is nice­ly writ­ten and has lots of won­der­ful photos.

Spark­ling wines and Cham­pagnes are not only su­perb ape­ri­tifs on their own, but they are also amen­able to cre­a­tive en­dea­vors … They may be fla­vor­ed with a small amount of li­queur to make a whole range of ape­ri­tifs. Crème de cassis, the black cur­rant li­queur that is used to create the well-known kir royale, is but one to con­si­der. Chambord, a rasp­berry li­queur fla­vor­ed with herbs and honey; Framboise de Bourgogne, made from rasp­berries; li­queur de fraise fash­ion­ed from straw­berries; and the peach-based crème de pêche are all good choices and each adds its par­ti­cu­lar dis­tinc­tion to spark­ling wine. A clas­sic com­bi­na­tion made with fresh­ly squeez­ed orange juice rather than a liqueur is the mi­mo­sa. Es­pe­cial­ly tan­ta­li­zing is a mi­mo­sa made with the ruby-colored juice of blood oranges, whose ber­ry flavor brings a sur­pri­sing ad­di­tion to the spark­ling wine.

The re­ci­pes given all call for 1/2 ounce of liqueur to 4 ounces of spark­ling wine—pretty much Ban­yuls’s re­co­men­ded pro­por­tion. I’m go­ing to have to try that blood orange mi­mo­sa! Blood oran­ges are my ab­so­lute fa­vo­rite orange. About the Kir, the book states

The origins of kir may be traced to a may­or of Dijon of the same name, who pur­por­ted­ly com­bined crème de cassis, which is pro­duc­ed in the region of Dijon, with a white wine from the re­gion of Bur­gun­dy. Ty­pi­cal­ly, the wine for a kir should not be a fine, com­plex one, but rather a dry, sim­ple white made to drink young. The dash of li­queur then height­ens, not con­fuses the fla­vor of the wine.

The recipe given calls for 1 T. cassis to 4 ounces of dry white wine “such as Sauvignon Blanc, Grey Riesling, or Aligoté.”

Of course I trust Banyuls’s report of what Chambord has to say (to us Yanks, any­way) about the Kir, but the first reac­tion is, That’s un­be­lie­va­ble! You’d think they’d never tasted cassis. Now that I think of it, though, there may be a rea­son for this se­lec­tive pro­pa­gan­da. The NYT has re­por­ted that currant pro­duc­tion in the U.S. (spe­ci­fi­cal­ly New York state) is poised to take off. If I re­mem­ber it right, we’ve never had a do­mes­tic currant-growing in­dus­try be­cause of turn-of-the-(twen­tieth) cen­tury ag­ri­cul­tu­ral re­stric­tions on cur­rant plants, which were thought to harbor a de­va­sta­ting fun­gus. It seems this might be un­war­ran­ted, and so we might fi­nal­ly have some lo­cal pro­duc­tion of cur­rants and cur­rant pro­ducts soon, and not have to rely sole­ly on im­ports from Canada and Europe. Maybe Chambord was hop­ing to pre­serve and ex­ploit the old status quo.