Post 4057 - Wednesday Night Stuff

Hello. It is nearly 1:30, technically on Thursday morning.

We did not much today. Went for a drive in air-conditioned comfort in the afternoon and got some groceries. Returned home. I took a long nap in the recroom, as the humidity had sapped what strength I had. 

We watched some television tonight. Saw Anica/Katey Day not go forward on America's Got Talent. Watched Master Chef. 

I just spent 15 minutes looking through a copy of Metamorphosis: The Apprenticeship of Harry Houdini, by my friend Bruce MacNab. I missed the book when it first came out, so I was pleased to get a copy earlier this year. It is about Houdini's early years of learning his craft and how he honed much of his talent here in this part of the world, especially in Nova Scotia. Using a level of research which astonishes me, MacNab finds old newspaper articles and other reports to fill in this part of the man's life. 

I cannot get past my respect for someone who researches the living hell out of something, whatever the subject is. I know how hard it is to do that, and how hard it is to find anything, and how easy it is to miss stuff, too. 

I can add one little tidbit. Bruce shows a picture of the layout of Halifax City Hall from back in the day, showing where the old jail cells were. When I was researching the Marie Thibeault unsolved murder a few months ago, I found a picture of a couple of police detectives holding what they thought was her murder weapon (it wasn't). They were standing outside the Halifax city jail on Barrington Street. That old doorway still exists; it is just a few meters North of the entrance to the Grand Parade. Thousands of people walk past it every day and because it so old and the same drab colour as everything around it, they have no idea what it is. 

Around 2010, then-councillor Dawn Sloane took me on a tour of some of the parts of city hall that the average person doesn't get to see. I was up on top of city hall with my Christmas tie and down in the bowels of city hall, where I saw the old jail cells. From one of those jail cells, Harry Houdini escaped back in 1896. I think I still have those old jail cell pictures somewhere on my Dropbox.

So far as I know, those old jail cells still exist. They likely just store old crap that people have forgotten about. Their historical significance has been all-but forgotten as well. 

I think I will turn in. We may go for another day trip on Thursday and I should get some shut eye.

Bev