31 December 2005

New Year's Eve Wedding

Surprise episode of Wedding happening across the street right now, 3 pm start. Liz thinks that the cabbie who drove her back from the StuporStore is singing at the reception. The party will be big! The party will outlive the marriage. Every year rain or shine they will remember their wedding.

T: long-sleeved burgandy
loc: church TV studio
temp: -8 C
sound: The Arrogant Worms with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Semi-Conducted

Thermostats

In the past month or so, I've burnt or overcooked roasts, blacked the top of a chicken casserole, charred a pizza. I thought it was the oven's bottom element overheating, burning up. Was hoping that it might mean a new stove to replace the 35-year-old McClary Easy that was the original stove installed in this apartment. No such luck.

I called the building manager who called the appliance service centre who called me to ask what I though the problem was. Then they sent buddy over. He said that bad elements simply don't work, don't heat up. Overheating likely means the thermostat had died. We pulled the stove out and tripped the circuit breaker OFF because the stove is hardwired. Below is the dead thermostat.

dead thermostat from oven
Funny thing is that when I called the building manager I also told her the building's back stairwell radiator was overheating. Thermostat was set at 15 C but the temperature was over 40 C /100 F. I know because I tested the heat with my photo developing thermometer. After the oven was repaired I went down the hall to find that the wall-mounted thermostat had also been replaced.

Funnier still is that under the parent's tree was a digital meat thermometer for me. No batteries though. Need two AAA.

t: long-sleeve burgandy
loc: conCtr
temp: -13 C
sound: The Cars, Greatest Hits

30 December 2005

Happy last weekday!

Wouldn't it be nice if there were no more weekdays? Stop.
Not just this year but forever. Stop.
No workdays. Stop.
Just life. Stop.
Free Fridays for Frigga. Stop.
It's always someone's b'day. Happy . . . happy. Stop.
Today it's one of my publishers' b'day. Stop.
Happy birthday, Simon. Stop.
Having a short whisky for breakfast here. Stop.
Shorts or shots of Alberta Springs all around. Stop.
Cheers! with everyone at Rad. Stop.
Never saw the bookstore. Stop.
Saving it for next time. Stop.
Tomorrow is WhiteFeather's b'day. Stop.
Biggest party of the year. Stop.
It's not just for her but . . . Stop.
How many others? Stop.
Cheers! Stop.

T: History of Art
loc: comCtr
temp: 3 C
sound: Clash on Broadway (CD 1)

29 December 2005

How you say it

On Tuesday, I was at my grandmother's in Cole Harbour. For some not-reason she had a rock'n'roll station on the radio. I was surprised. Maybe the liveliness of the beats register if the words don't. Who knows?

Anyway . . . After some ads, the announcer FM- DJ- radio personnality, whatever, came on and announced that the next song would be "Rock the Cash-Bar" by The Clash. Said it twice. No attempt at a correct pronunciation of Casbah or Kasbah.

Earlier the same day or the day before CBC One was broadcasting some concert from England and the British radio commentator introducing it said they'd be performing several "Bar-Rock" pieces when in reality they were baroque compositions.

It's all in how you say it. Same with visitors, non-locals or come-from-aways that say "anTIGoNish" for Antigonish (the opposite of it might be the nonexistent town of "Progonish") or "Agri-Cola" for Agricola Street in Halifax.

I'm no perfectionist in this area: I grew up saying "fillum" for film (and my mother still says "fillum"), Chicargo and Newb Brunswick amongst other mispronunciations.

Worry pas. I's been workin' 'pon me Anguish. Hit's gettin' bedder tha more ah spek it.

Wes wish yous an yers:
'appy New Year!
t: Guinness
loc: comCtr
temp: 2
sound: Bif I Bificus

found posted

Found on buildings and power poles in the Reserve.
T: Guiness
temp: 2 C
loc: fred ComCtr
sound: BTO, "Down to the Line"

27 December 2005

on xmas day

What is a Christmas season without something unexpected?

The day before’s dusting of sun disappeared by noon. Dad went and cut still-growing green onions in the cold frame out in the yard. Mom and I went for a morning walk back along the causeway and past the two spring-alive-with-peepers ponds now ice-covered and ringed with dried-on-the-stalk cattails and low spruce trees. A piece of land (22 acres, Mom thinks) for sale there. Much of it low, but there is one good ridge that might be build-on-able as long as there’s water suitable for a well.

wooden ship's keel-hull on beachWe walked back out to Hawkeye Island along one of the beaches where I used to play as a kid. A beach often busy with little shorebirds running in the surf line. This ship’s hull has been in the bank there for many years. Never visible until a few years ago, it is slowly revealing itself. I wish I had a large building lobby, or sunken floor area in a living room, vast enough to hold and display this wooden, pegged-together hull. A space with high open-raftered wood ceiling, skylights, a field stone wall with fireplace and a square of comfy chairs with end tables in the corners. But that’s the stuff of dreams . . .

This Christmas Day had its puzzles and troubles but not in the gifting or cooking (other than no one knowing how long mom had been cooking the turkey, and she suspects at least an hour too long). I called my sister in Toronto and got her answering machine. Ruth had done the same the night before when we were gathered at her place. Carol wasn't at her home or wasn't answering . . . ?

Abbey the black LabIn late afternoon, while we were doing the gift unwrapping thing, Ruth & Mike’s black Labrador, Abbey, got into the pantry and attacked Mom’s cherry pound cake. It was on a low shelf. Dad thinks he accidentally left the pantry’s folding door open. That’s their normal position for the folding door even though it jams up the space in front of the microwave. I always close it or I’m forever banging into it and/or the pull-out shelf underneath the microwave.

Worse happened at dinner. When we were toasting the season, the day, Mom and my arms connected wrong. I was sitting to her left on one side of the table. My arm had been high above hers as I was clinking with Ruth across the table. Somehow, and I didn’t see it because I was looking at Ruth and Mike, her wine glass collided with the side or underside of my outstreached arm. Mom’s wine glass smashed into my water glass sitting on the table below. Both broke and scattered glass and liquids across our side of the table and our plates of turkey dinner. Mom fled the table and refused to come back even though we cleaned everything up and prepared new plates of food. At least she sulked instead of raged. That may have been the shock, I don’t know. Yesterday she mentioned just being too tired, exhausted.

tree & window reflectionThis photo is of the tree though the living room window with the reflected Fishermen’s Reserve giving depth and colour. An interesting blend, not double exposed or a negative sandwich. Something my eye saw that the camera actually captured well. I like it!

t: grey
loc: loft
temp: 0 C
sound: East Coast Christmas

24 December 2005

Seaforth or Bus(ed)

I had intended to write here yesterday. More stories from the road or pictures and descriptions from road to Seaforth. But yesterday morning I checked my email first thing. An incident simply described in a close friend’s email filled my head and I ended up spending most of the day writing two short stories simultaneously. Stories for children, at that. Or they hopefully will be stories suitable for children once they’re edited and rewritten to clear the fog and replace up to 29-word sentences, some of the polysyllabic words, and too complex or abstract sentence structures. Don’t hold your breath waiting.

Okay, I’ll start with one moving sunset tree photo taken from inside the bus as we approached the Halifax International Airport exit.

Buddy in the aisle seat beside me was a 3rd year geek from UNB taking I don’t know what except for taking a new girl home to his parents’ for xmas. Who else but a geek would carry their student union health insurance plan brochure with them and joke about the monetary values attached to various injuries and dismemberments.

While the “segregation” drama was unfolding in the two rows behind us he inhaled chunks of Chris Bros. TNT pepperoni while the girl picked at the vegies and sliced meats sticking out of the side of her sub sandwich. She said it would be rude to put the whole thing to her mouth and bite it. [Why’d she buy it then?] Boy then dives into shortbread cookies, Coca-Cola, potato chips and bottled water. By the time we are a half hour out of Moncton, passing Sackville, he’s also lathered his hands twice with Vaseline Intensive Care lotion. [What’s so freakin’ special about his hands?]

Seaforth is located by road on Highway 207 on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. Eastern being east of Halifax, but the latest expansion of Halifax absorbed Seaforth and much more into the Halifax Regional Municipality (or HRM). My parents’ house is on the shore of Three Fathom Harbour. Beyond the string of low-tide connected islands there’s nothing until you hit Portugal. Beyond the other side of Three-Fathom Harbour we can see the mouth of Halifax Harbour.

Out the kitchen window one sees the garden plots where many vegetables are grown and far beyond them a cluster of shacks and sheds.

How long the Fishermen's Reserves has been here, I don’t know. Since whenever the Causeway Road was build to connect Hawkeye Island to the mainland. I’ve been coming out here all my life, since long before my parents bought a micro cottage and land here upon which to build this house. We came here to buy live lobster and fresh fish in season directly from the fishermen. [We still do.] We came here to dig clams and to enjoy the beaches.

The reserve holds a crazy mix of working fishing season shacks, equipment sheds, wharves, boats, nets, lobster traps, crab pots, summer and artist cottages, human-loon-built structures, and mangy feline-leukemia sick cats fed by do-gooder city crazies we’d all like to put the run to. Some to the buildings are abandoned, Every year or two one gets lost to fire. two years ago Hurrican Jaun claimed several buildings and wharves and scattered the contents far and wide. Beyond the reserve is a breakwater, walkable at low tide, that connects to Wedge Island and Rat Rock. Beyond them is the vast Atlantic Ocean.


T: moose petrogylph
loc: loft desk
temp: -1 C
sound: Little Feat Waiting for Columbus

22 December 2005

just to leave Moncton

Second bus is an overflow charter bus, a Gray Line that’s Orleans/Acadian subsidiary owned. It is taking people for the Halifax Airport and Dartmouth before filling remaining seats with Halifax bound. No Sackville, Amherst, Springhill, Oxford, Truro, Antigonish, Capers or Newfie bound. They’ll be on other busses out of Moncton.

Some insanely stressed onboard. Freaking about their luggage and a perceived “segregation” of passengers. Just because she works for herself but may have to hire in the new year and she’s large enough for two seats and too loud talking all the time as if it’s her wind that’s the only thing running this bus, and has several equally large offspring clutched to her of whom, the daughter, hasn’t been back in 11-years since they moved to Ottawa and they happen to be black people and are heading to Fairview by taxi from the Highfield Square bus stop in North-end Dartmouth [my stop too, that why I on this same freaking bus] doesn’t mean that they’re being segregated. How freaking paranoid to think that organizing three buses of passengers going somewhere along the same bus route is segregation!

I hear the “segregation” word repeatedly but I can’t respond to her self-centred delusion. I want to tell her, Shut up and breathe. Shut up and rest. The bus company been running this route longer than you have. They know what they’re doing. If everyone going to the airport and Dartmouth is on this bus then all of our tagged luggage will also be on this bus. That’s how it works. When the ticket collector come onboard she starts yammering at him about the luggage. He tries to reassure her. It doesn’t take. Then she confesses that at least one of her pieces is labelled “Halifax-Dartmouth” not “Dartmouth” or “Highfield, Dartmouth” like the rest. So that it: she doesn’t want to be responsible for the possibility that someone else might misinterpret her stupidity in labelling excess luggage. How did she ever get this far?

All this before we ever left the Moncton terminal. This was the first time in well over a year that I’ve arrived at the Moncton terminal in weekday daytime and not seen the bus met by the crew of undercover RCMP led by baldy with the push-broom mustache. Nice present.

T: grey knit
loc: Gray Lines coach
temp (?) -14 C
sound: yammering all around and in my head

21 December 2005

Happy Solstice

Happy Shortest Day of the Year! Merry Longest Night!
Today is the real New Year's Eve. We've made it through another year. Yeah! I recognized it this year simply by being up before dawn (rosy coloured in the west) with a mug of hot chocolated coffee and a raisin bread roll (and of course by writing this). Have already wished several people, family and friends, a "Happy Solstice" on live chat and will continue to wish this to people I meet throughout the day.

Cheers! Sociable! Živeli!
[Photo by me is of the namesake carving in front of the Blue Canoe Restaurant, Lincoln, NB.]

T: lavender
loc: comCtr
temp: -14 C
sound: Les Paiens, Sphére: épiphonoe 2

20 December 2005

Mall Mauled

I don't do malls or shopping centres well. They assault my senses and what little sensibility this poor artist has going for him. The excess of the StupourStore, no longer a simpler grocery store, is often enough to do me in. Subjecting or submitting myself to consumer abuse is worse.

Inside a StupourStore
Last Thursday, because I already had the excess of a rented car in the parting lot behind the apartment building, I made myself go to the mall. Really, I was going for an even rarer thing for me, to see a movie in a movie theatre. But that not what I'm writing about today.

I feel as freak-alien as an Amish person or member of some other closed group [and I am a near-impoverished poet-artist-creator] when I'm in a shopping centre's excess of products and dazzle and conspicuous acquisition and consumption. I don't recognize the people, their shapes and sizes, the wheeled carts of mostly branded plastic crap and shinies cast-offs, knock-offs, rip-offs. Fashion, marketing of consumption-driven trends, greed, lust, envy, coveting [I sound like a bible-addict ranting this stuff]—what is it that makes all this necessary?

I can see that I am clearly not of that world, their world, even if there is some congruency. I'm not aspiring to adopt their lifestyle or to acquire those dry goods and sundries, those excesses. I don't want to acquire them and their stuff. I don't even like seeing that it's been created. But I do have to admit that PlayStation, stretch denim, remainder bins, double doubles and much more are all human creations as much as church and state, poetry and prostitution, ICBMs and drift-nets.

I am always more inclined to walk by a store than to enter. Am I a loner [a one wolf] or sociopath? I don't think so. I just don't have that type of desire. I don't want those things. I have too much art stuff already. My (mostly Canadian) literature shelved over the past quarter-century would augment most any university library collection [especially in theses days of acquisition restraint perverted by academic and scientific publications rates].

A mall is so much worse for me than storefronts along a street. The mall is dictator to it's paying tenants. The mall wants/needs as many of us as it can spiderweb catch as badly as any televangelist. Cnsumption is a faith. Not mine.

shirt(s): faded lavender T, dk blue knit
loc: conCtr
temp: -5 C
sound: CHSR, Hatchet to the Head

18 December 2005

Warp Tree Weavings

Last Sunday, pre-full moon, was even warmer at plus 6 C than today's plus 1 C. Walked to No'side Fredericton across the ex-train bridge and then unpriver on the trail past were Gibson's engine roundhouse used to stand to Carleton Park. Gulls at the water's edge. Evidence all around of the rain-filled floodwaters of recent weeks.

warp tree with iceThe scattered young, city-planted maples near the boat ramp all supported small ice-structures hanging of their truynks and lower branches. They drew me closer to photograph the trees and ice.

warp treebackOnce I got close enough to really see the trees I was struck by the floodwater-forced weavings in the wefts of branches. From the downriver-backside the branches were clearly visible.

warp tree frontFrom the front, the upriver side, the weaving is truly great: a tightly pressed arrangement of grasses, corn stalks and cobs filling the fan of tree branches.

T: plain black
loc: ComCtr
temP: -5
sound: NOFX "What's the Matter With Parents Today?"

Griffin Poetry Prize

The deadline for the C$100,000 Griffin Poetry Prize is approaching. Books must be submitted postmarked no later than December 31, 2005 for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2005. Please remember to complete all necessary customs/duties paperwork when shipping your entries to ensure delays are avoided.

Griffin Poetry Reading Podcasts

The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry now provides poetry lovers with unique Griffin Poetry Prize content via a new medium—podcasting. Podcasting enables you to download and listen to audio content on your computer or on any device that plays MP3 files, such as iPods—whenever you want. Visit their selection of poetry podcasts at griffinpoetryprize.com/podcast

If you have any questions regarding the rules, or would like to download an entry form, please visit the web site, at griffinpoetryprize.com.

The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry
6610 Edwards Blvd
Mississauga ON L5T 2V6
Canada
Telephone: 905.565.5993

16 December 2005

still weird

Haven't blogged in a week. Been too busy. Not surprisingly, I am still weird . . .

Jelena, of RAD a.d., beside one of the many historic :-) site plaques in Fredericton.

Yesterday, I drove my publisher's representative from Beograd to the Fredericton (YFC) airport after a two-week visit to moi et Broken Jaw. A select few BJP books and catalogues, a Fredericton sign, a bottle of Albert Springs whisky for the publisher, a pewter bracelet of leaves, a CD of photographs, a CD of Bon Jovi for the publisher's son, Bay of Fundy beach rocks and much more in Jelena' luggage. Ideas in our heads for possible things, book and other projects, activities to do in the future . . .

The weather was all over the place. Last Sunday was a warm plus 6 C so we went out for a walk along the Saint John River. This photo is a view from Devon looking downriver.

Meetings, books and beer, especially Picaroon's Bitter—draft or bottled. Meals of my tomato and tarragon chicken; bacon-wrapped scallops; assorted cheeses, smoked meats and pickles; ajvar; homemade jams and bell pepper jellies; breads; Alberta buffalo stew; maple-smoked Atlantic salmon, farmers' market samosas, schnitzle; a MAC Yule feast on Saturday-past of bacon-wrapped dates, curry lentils, mixed greens salad, stuffed eggs, goose and Cornish hen with cherry sauce, poached pears and BYOB . . .

Wednesday, this week, was -12 C with wind and a -19 sensation, but without the snowbomb happening in other parts of New Brunswick. I rented a car, a grey Neon, and we roadtripped to the shore> through Harvey to St. Stephen and Jelena's first view of the evil empire across the St Croix River (but without a visa to enter), a church of Tim Horton's pit stop (her first time there for coffee and donuts); then along the shore to St Andrews and fish & chips lunch, a dollar store visit; and out the twisty Glebe Road on the shore to and through Chamcook; and back to Fredericton with a stop at Pete's for a bag of live seabugs of the farewell feast (and, not surprisingly, Jelena's first lobster & fiddleheads. Liz made a great seafood chowder to start the meal (with Schooner lager in memory of her dad).

The under-renovations airport is such a confusing mess. Jelen's check-in went okay except for not getting a Frankfurt-Budapest boarding pass (but to ask and get one in Toronto during her five-hour layover). Right now she should be on the road out of Budapest in a Gea Tours mini-van heading for Beograd.

T: long-sleeve burgandy
loc: comCtr
temp: -9 C
sound: none (internal error, need to reboot)

09 December 2005

25 years ago

Last night, Jelena and I watched The Beatles' movie HELP. Spoof on themselves, espionage movies, comic skiing and more. Some really great laughs! Spontaneously borrowed it from the public library when looking for their copy of Robert Rodriguez's low budget, indie masterpiece, El Miriachi.

Twenty-five years ago tonight I went to Nathan Phillips Square in front of Toronto City Hall and joined a spontaneous gathering of about 10,000 people shocked by the shooting and death-murder of John Lennon the day before. The shooting made no sense. It still doesn't.

It was a cold night, 9 December 1980. Far colder than during John's concerts in the very same square. People at that concert were in the crowd around me. We talked to strangers. Many lit white candles. Some cried, sobbed, hugged. It was an emotional gathering. We were all shocked at the senseless taking of John Lennon's life. I thing there may have been people talking, giving speeches or something . . . The vigil ended with a spontaneous walk-march by many of the gathered mourners up Yonge Street all the way up to the home of CHUM FM.

A day or two later there was a local musicians tribute show at the El Mocambo. What I remember most clearly from that show, where most of the musicians-bands played a mix of their own and Lennon-Beatles tunes, was Goddo (It's Lonely at the Top But Who Cares) without guitar who stood at the mic and talked, said he just couldn't make music that day, then he gave a reading of the lyrics of "Johnny Was" by Bob Marley:
Woman hold her head and cry
Cause her son had been
Shot down in the street and died
From a stray bullet

. . .

Johnny was a goodman
A week or so later I moved from Toronto after 15-months of living there and returned a passenger on the train to Nova Scotia.

Today, I give this small telling from my time in Toronto around John being gunned down. Without planning to, I guess that we paid tribute last night.

T: Little Feat Smooth Sailin' tour 2005
loc: comCtr
temp: -11 C
Sound: Bob Marley & The Wailers, Babylon by Bus

06 December 2005

Unpreempted!?!

Just had a phone call from Tristis, the CHSR station manager. The preemption of tonight's Ashes, Paper & Beans is off. Melissa is too sick to get to the station, to speak, to be on air with a day of planned special broadcast programming in recognition of the sad anniversary of the Montreal Massacre (of 16 women students at École Polytechnique) and the now annual call for the elimination of violence against women.

Tris told me I am "unpreempted" and apologized for the short notice [8 hours] where preemptions require a week's notice. Instead of having one of the very few, very rare, Tuesday nights in Fredericton that I'm not live on air, I'm to pull together a not planned program and rearrange people and things to make it happen.

Expect the unexpected: a known-world Viking, The Clash & Allen Ginsberg, an Irish-Canadian poet, a Portuguese-Canadian storyteller.

T: Dragon's Breath Pale Ale
loc: comCTR
temp: -5
sound: Portishead, Dummy

05 December 2005

She’s Such a Geek

Anthology call for submissions:

She’s Such a Geek

An Anthology by and for Women Obsessed with Computers, Science, Comic Books, Gaming, Spaceships, and Revolution Slated for Fall 2006

Geeks are taking over the world. They make the most popular movies and games, pioneer new ways to communicate using technology, and create new ideas that will change the future. But the stereotype is that only men can be geeks. So when are we going to hear from the triumphant female nerds whose stories of outer space battles will inspire generations, and whose inventions will change the future? Right now. Female geeks are busting out of the labs and into the spotlight. They have the skills and knowledge that can inspire social progress, scientific breakthroughs, and change the world for the better, and they’re making their voices heard, some for the first time, in Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders’ book She’s Such a Geek. This anthology will celebrate women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. We’re looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren’t afraid to match wits with men or computers. The essays in She’s Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics—and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well as what it means to be female. More than anything, She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it’s a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, write epics, and run the government. We want introspective essays that explain what being a geek has meant to you. Describe how you’ve fought stereotypes to be accepted among nerds. Explore why you are obsessed with topics and ideas that are supposed to be “for boys only.” Tell us how you felt the day you realized that you would be devoting the rest of your life to discovering algorithms or collecting comic books. We want strong, personal writing that is also smart and critical. We don’t mind if you use the word “fuck,” and we don’t mind if you use the word “telomerase.” Be celebratory, polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky. Possible topics include:

* what turned you into a geek
* your career in science, technology, or engineering
* growing up geeky
* being a geek in high school today
* battling geek stereotypes (i.e racial stereotypes and geekdom, cultural analysis of geek chic and the truth about nerds, the idea that women have to choose between being sexually desirable and smart, stereotypes about geek professions such as computer programmers)
* sex and dating among geeks
* science fiction fandom
* role-playing game or comic-book subcultures
* the joys of math
* blogging or videogames
* female geek bonding
* geek role models for women
* feminist commentary on geek culture
* women’s involvement in DIY science and technology groups
* stories from women involved in geek pop and underground cultures. These might include comic book writers, science fiction writers, electronic music musicians, and women interested in the gaming world.
* women’s web networks and web zine grrrl culture
* issues of sexism in any or all of the above themes

Editors: Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are geeky women writers. Annalee is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and writes the syndicated column Techsploitation. Charlie is the author of Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press) and publisher of other magazine.
Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, publishes groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.
Deadline: January 15, 2006
Length: 3,000-6,000 words
Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page. Essays will not be returned.
Submitting: Send essay electronically as a Document or Rich Text Format file to Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders at sheissuchageek@gmail.com.
Payment: $100 plus two books
Reply: Please allow until February 15 for a response. If you haven’t received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission.



shirt: charcoal polo sport
loc: comCtr
temp: -3 C
sound: Great Big Sea, play

04 December 2005

make like a tree

Postcard from the corkboard beside my computer. I've had it several years now, from one of my travels to or through Montreal. It's a real fav for the image.

T: Mojo Club, Senta
loc: ComCtr
temp: -1 C
sound: Richard Kean, Shrine

03 December 2005

Merry Timewarp Day


Happy Bonus New Years Day!

You'd thing that a wall calendar produced and published by the national trade magazine of the Canadian book publishing industry would not have mistakes but this is the second mistake on this one this year. No question that today's timewarp is a bonus. An additional and early New Year's Eve can be a wonderful thing.

WW Boyce Farmer's Market morning to start the day: samosas and schnitzel, fair trade coffee, pot stickers and pad thai, buffalo sausage and burgers, fisherhof smoked herring, mackerel, eel and maybe sturgeon, organic vegetables, turkeys, salmon, scallops, eggs, bread, Montreal bagles, turkey jerky, chili bufallo jerky, spring rolls, apples, squash, cider and so much more. Saturday morning in Fredericton in the Saint John River valley.

By 8 pm you might find me at the CD launch-concert-fundraiser by New Brunswick Latino musician Cesar Morales for his first CD. Happens at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, 732 Charlotte St, Fredericton. Tickets: $8 (students), $10 (adults); available at Mazzuca's, Underground Cafe, True Food Organics, or at the door. This is a fundraiser for the New Hope Foundation school building and scholarship fund in Rabinal, Guatemala. Supported by the Breaking the Silence Network.

T: whale by Red Crane
loc: ar(ti)s(t) studio
temp: -1
sound: Dylan & The Dead, "All Along the Watchtower"

02 December 2005

neopigeons

smudged cold feet dancing
in city squares and parking lots
jabbing chattering blue streaks
on benches streets and sidewalks
clogging building entryways
banned from cubicle and kitchen
from taxi bus and airplane
from store school and hospital
—even patients hobble ouside
join flocks of neopigeons
huddled in clouds of blue funk

T: Pennsic XXXII
loc: comCtr
temp: 11 C
sound: Dylan & The Dead, "Gotta Serve Somebody"

The passing of a Wee Giant

I rose this Friday morning to find a distributed email of personal significance waiting to be downloaded to my In Box. Many thanks, first of all, to James Deahl, a Past President, and to Donna Allard, President of the Canadian Poetry Association, for sending out the following notice:

Dear fellow CPA members,

It is my sad duty to announce the deaths of Margaret Saunders and David Hillen earlier this week. Both were buried today [Thursday, 1 Dec 2005].

Margaret and David were both very active in the Hamilton literary scene and in the old Hamilton chapter of the CPA. Margaret died of cancer; David died of heart disease.

Cards and notes can be sent to the family of Margaret Saunders at 178 Bond St N, Hamilton ON L8S 3W6 and to the family of David Hillen at 111 Cannon St E, Hamilton ON L8L 2A2.

Both Margaret and David had been ill for quite some time. Their passing is a great loss to Canadian letters and, of course, to all Hamilton-area writers. They were well loved.

Fraternally,

James Deahl
Margaret Saunders was a poet, editor and publisher. We first met during my young pup 15-months in Toronto in 1979-80 when she was editor and publisher of WEE Giant magazine. She must have been in Toronto for an Axle Tree Coffee House reading or something like that. She later published poetry of mine in her mag. Because of something I did, or said, or that happened early on, Margaret jokingly called me her guardian angel and that stuck for years whenever we met.

Margaret was active in the Haiku Society of Canada and at their annual gathering at the monastery in Alymer, Québec the participants had early morning walks on the rocks of les rapides Deschênes on the Ottawa River. The year I attended, Margaret started the group writing of a linked renga later published as sounds of an occasional monk (Haiku Canada Sheet, 1988).

Margaret is one of the poets who was so encouraging of me when I first went public with my poetry. I've always had good thoughts and good memories about her. As James wrote above, Margaret was truly well loved.

T: Pennsic XXXII
loc: comCtr
temp: 7
sound:
world wings
tap letters for words
december rain

01 December 2005

Meet me at the horse


How long before I next do the Beograd thing? Before I next go to meet someone at the horse before going to a cafe, the theatre or opera, the university, a bookstore? Or to lead a workshop, or to give a lecture or reading?

The horse statue everybody knows: the great Prince Mihailo, long dead, leader, cast in bronze heroic in the theatre square off Kneza Mihailova, in front of the National Theatre.

How long before I again walk those streets cobbled or paved? How long before I walk passed the out-of-doors cafes that can seat thousands of patrons?. How long before I again stand, or sit on the wide stone steps below the horse, waiting . . . ?

t: Guinness
loc: comCtr
temp: 6 C
sound: Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine