Annual Foolishness 2013

As I have several friends who cannot see, or if you prefer to listen rather than read, click the  MP3 audio file  It is about 20 minutes long.

About halfway through The 2012 Christmas Card Project, I foundered. I can’t even find the cards that weren’t sent, so I have to start from scratch this year. I just read somewhere that it is okay to start from scratch every day of your life - a worthy maxim for terminal  procrastinators. A further motivation:  Canada Post announced, a huge postal increase (about $.25) on Jan 1 and elimination of door-to-door delivery within the next 5 years. It may not a  be a huge inconvenience for us until we are more decrepit, but job losses and cost to business will  be significant. Why do  these announcements always come just before Christmas - like Kellogg’s in London, On. Who will be left to sacrifice to the Golden Goddess of  Consumerism when no one has a good job or modest pension?

Amid  anniversaries of massacres, and continuing man-made and “natural” disasters, we have lost Nelson Mandela, a man whose name has resonated from the time we began calling for his release, and  boycotting  South African wine,  to joining the throngs in  Montréal to greet him in June 1990 and watching the amazing events that unfolded afterwards. To have in our lifetime even one  such individual in our weary world, rising “above the sad and lowly plains” is miraculous. Alas, the “men of strife” will not “ hush the noise” to listen for the angels. Hmmm?  Those old hymns are often hard-hitting when you look more closely beyond the familiar first verse. Thank you Edmund Sears for the poetry of  “It came upon a midnight clear”.

We had a VERY noisy year in Canada with an embarras de richesses of public figures wallowing in greed, entitlement, lies, cheating, denials,  shallow apologies, appalling shenanigans and intrigue to avoid discovery. The spin doctors are in dervish mode;  the Buck never stops. The powerful collude to divide, befuddle and sell our futures and our livelihoods to the highest bidder. Just imagine what might be accomplished if all the money spent  by oil companies and  our federal government on propaganda were re-directed  toward alternative energy development, finding better ways to house those cast out by increasing social disparity, and helping damaged soldiers and people whose lives have been ruined  by disasters and the "economy". Most annoying are federal “Action Plan” ads paid for with tax dollars. It’s hard work to try to turn anger into something resembling compassion for the likes of  Duffy, Wallin and Ford with their hubris on steroids - or mental instability in the case of the latter. Mandela showed a powerful  way, but the road is long and few of us are brave or strong.  Many talk;  how many walk the walk?  We need stories of goodness, not just of great souls, but in ordinary lives. 

David with his favourite
"kind of Coke":   Root Beer

I turn to two such lives near and dear to us.  In July, Ron’s brother, David, died after several months of such diminished quality of life that he lost the determination that had marked so much of his life. His roommate of decades, Michael,  died in February, surviving many years beyond what was expected for someone with his complicated and rare condition:  Coffin-Lowry Syndrome . We think David’s system simply could not  handle such a great change in his life. Within a month he, too, was in the hospital on life support, with pneumonia,  an aneurysm and surgery, and a rapid decline into helplessness: respirator, tracheotomy,  feeding tube,  and enforced immobility –  not things   easy for any of us, let alone, David, who didn’t much like people touching him. Ron visited in May and came back hopeful.  David’s wonderful team in Calgary tried  to figure out ways for him to be at home again, but it was not to be. The doctor called from the hospital for permission to stop interventions at the end of July and in less than a day he was gone, and we were en route to Calgary. I still haven’t done all the thank you notes. I still feel a low.  This summer,  Ron also lost his dear Uncle Aubrey in Cape Breton, who had lived a long and full life, and his cousin Patty, 64 in Ontario who lived a good life, but too short. And there were so many good  friends and neighbors. The list grows longer every year. We are at that age.  David's memorial page will be here until August:   David's Memorial Page


Last year I was immersed in the Roman Empire, the Burgundians and Goths, Brynhild and Siegfried, and the other characters of the Nibelungenlied. I still am, but have sidetracked through Caesar’s own account of his conquest of Gaul, which is far more interesting than I thought it would  be. Of course, it is rife with genocide, as rebellious Gaulish tribes vanish from the face of the planet, just as the wrong tribes did in the Old Testament - and sadly still do.  I continue to read about the religions of other people, otherwise known as mythology, and the mythology of the one in which I was raised, which is a rich trove, too. I’ve discovered British classicist, Bettany Hughes, and enjoyed her very readable books on Socrates and Helen of Troy. Hope she writes more. Imagine my surprise to come downstairs and find Ron watching a documentary on Alexandria with Bettany Hughes. Perhaps I will be a classicist in the next life. At my summer intensive storytelling workshop with Laura Simms  in New York this summer, I worked on the story of Io who was turned into a cow, but am now turning toward cats for another story project to be entitled Holy Cats. Now that I’ve written that down, it means I have to stop procrastinating and get it up and running or I’ll be very embarrassed if/when I write Annual Foolishness 2014. I'm slowly escaping from being webmaster for Storytellers of Canada so I can get on with these imagined projects. Tempus fugit!  We’ve hired a designer and a project manager. My role is to provide content, background and 12 years of ?wisdom as this unfolds. My own wee website molders from inattention, a victim of being the shoemaker’s child; ergo, Annual Foolishness is still on a blog - maybe it always will be. I’ve been reading a lot this year – never enough, of course – but have especially enjoyed: Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds  by Natalie Zemon Davis who also wrote The Return of Martin Guerre; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern  by Stephen Greenblatt; Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies and all three of the Call the Midwife  books. Ron and I enjoy Simon Schama’s documentaries, and the Met Opera Live in HD broadcasts.

In addition to singing with Dartmouth Choral Society, I’ve joined the choir at Dad’s church (United) which is conducted  by the excellent Malcolm Bradley, who also conducts the Choral Society. They were looking for altos, even this pagan alto. We generally sing interesting music, though every now and then concessions are made to some rather sappy modern things. I may be a pagan, but I prefer staunch old pre-20th century Protestant hymns. I’ve even been doing some Scripture readings. When approached to do this - because of the mellifluous voice in which I read the lectures before the opera broadcasts :-)  –  I did make full disclosure of my pagan state and said, “.. well if the Lord don’t mind, I don’t.”  Apparently he didn’t. No thunderbolts struck the church, or me, so I expect we’re okay.  The Dartmouth Choral Society took on a large project in the spring, The Peacemakers by Welsh composer, Karl Jenkins, with three massed choirs and an orchestra. My impression was that this is a sometimes saccharine piece, but it certainly is fun to sing in 150-voice choir with an orchestra . One night at rehearsal, Halifax soprano, Jennifer Farrell, and came by to announce a summer workshop called “Sing Yourself Well” run by her, Gary Ewer and Wayne Rogers, in whose choirs I sang in Corner Brook many years ago. Given that dancing, long walks, leaping tall buildings, or even riding my bike (I fell off it once too often this summer and did some fairly permanent damage to my hip), are not on my can-do list anymore, I heard this workshop call my name loudly. I spent a few months trying to stretch away the pain, before I learned that I had injured more than my dignity, and was prescribed a serious “rest” period and a lot of sitting on ice. Thus, I am taking private singing lessons, for the first time in my life, from Jennifer Farrell, and was diagnosed a soprano at the workshop after years of singing alto. I still sing alto in the church choir as altos, pagan or otherwise, are needed. So are tenors, but I can’t do anything about that though I did volunteer. Malcolm is letting me sing soprano in Choral Society. Last week, we did a concert of Bach’s cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern and Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Blue Engine String Quartet and 2 French Horns - no partridge in a Pear Tree, though, and had good reviews.  I’ve blundered my way through two recitals singing Yum Yum’s song from The Mikado, The sun whose rays… ,  and an Italian art song, Pur Dicesti, O Bocca, Bocca Bella. I come from lessons glossy and happy. It is more about process than results. I do not come from physiotherapy appointments for a  frozen shoulder with as much glee. I head to the Italian market for mushroom cheese torta, the ultimate comfort food - and a completely counterproductive gluten fix. I hope this will be more about results than process.

Cherry blossoms in Newark

Our travels are becoming smaller: Corner Brook in March, and a short visit in April to New York for as many hours of opera as you could get for the buck: Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Wagner’s  Siegfried  with my own hero, Jay Hunter Morris from Paris, Texas. He is one who replied to my fan email last year. We visited my high school friends Tamsen and Bobbi and their husband and were taken out for the meal of our lives at a place called  Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a serious locavore habitat in Tarrytown. Ron discovered it is # 63 on a list of 100 best restaurants in the world. I bet that’s the only time we will ever experience one of those. Ron also learned you can buy sous-vide machines for home kitchens - this from an interesting couple we chatted with at a restaurant we went to after Siegfried. Bobbi and Ed took us to a recital at Newark Cathedral which has an impressive pipe organ. We had a tour the Cathedral by an most enthusiastic priest who was clearly passionate about the wonderful building. It was cherry blossom time in Newark. Who knew?  They have more cherry trees there than they do in Washington DC. The park along the river was filled with Japanese visitors eating picnic lunches under the blossoms. We went to the Newark Museum which is a little gem. I had visited it before, but Ron had never seen it, and we had lunch in an Irish pub in Pearl River, New York where I went to high school. The 50th anniversary reunion is in August, but I doubt I will get to it. 

The Storytellers of Canada conference was held in Ottawa  and we were there for Canada Day. Canada’s celebrity astronaut, Chris Hadfield, was among the folks on stage on Parliament Hill. Wanna bet he'll go into politics, eh? There were wonderful musical groups on the streets. The mood was lovely. I enjoyed the mothers in niqabs and abayas clapping along while their boys step danced to the bluegrass band, and a  performance of Capoeira which was new to me. We ate at Murray Street Restaurant in Byward Market three times!  One of the partners is a Newfoundlander; we love the place. I won a $250 VIA rail travel voucher at the last conference; it seemed appropriate to take the train to this one. It was so relaxing, unlike plane travel, but the return trip would have cost far more than two plane tickets home so we flew. That just doesn’t seem right. We managed an all-too -brief visit to Ron’s brother in Brockville.

Ron continues with his Scottish country dancing and is on the executive of the performing group now. He’s kept very busy and as much in demand being 1) a man, and  2)  a man with a kilt. He was at a week-long Scottish country dance teaching workshop in Sackville, New Brunswick when we got the call about his brother, and I had fetch him. He continues to acquire culinary toys. I should be grateful it isn’t snowmobiles or motorcycles, but I’m worried about parrots. I don’t want any creature that is going to outlive us. He gave in to his lust for sous-vide machine mentioned above and can now aspire to the modernist cuisine made famous in Barcelona. He has been watching  I-university courses on the science of cooking from Harvard - but there is an essential dimension missing until they can develop an aroma App on iPad.  We both blundered into the 21st century with iPhones and iPads this year. Ron was the first to venture forth, just before he went to Alberta in the spring, and dragged me kicking and screaming after him. It’s rather nice to have someone else in the house to whom I can now turn for techie issues. It used to be the other way around. These are handy devices but I can say with certainty, that they have not made us better or happier people. I think it probably took me less time to compose Annual Foolishness back when I did it with ancient Underwood and white-out. Now that it can make it look “professional”,  I’ve become obsessive-compulsive, and trying to get it to look right in Blogger requires medication. For those of you who don’t waste hours on Facebook, I have prepared a little gazette of the postings that seemed to receive the most comments and “likes” which I put on the Blog, too.

Dad, Nov 11, 2013

Dad turned 92 this year, and is doing very well - he’s probably healthier than me. He finally gave in to pressure from his doctor, and us, to get a walker, and we picked out a shiny, red one. He is now able to get downtown to the Seniors’ Centre and the Legion twice as fast, and probably more safely than he did before. I think he is more visible to cars, too.  We’ve been having an epidemic of cars hitting pedestrians in Halifax, and he doesn’t always look.  Nov 11 is a big day for Dad.  As one of the few WW2 veterans who can still make it up to the cenotaph, he is frequently called upon to lay wreathes. and this year he placed two, one on behalf of the provincial government and one on behalf of the Legion, in which he was active for many years. This year he got “Tweeted’ and his photo ended up on the CBC Remembrance day blog. If you visit the blog, you will find him about halfway down the page, just 4 photos below Rob Ford!!  CBC's National Remembrance Day Photo blog

Father Christmas was a gift
 from David many years ago

It is time to stop ranting now and wish you some quiet time over the season, and most of all, peace and freedom from all the noise. Here is dear old Father Christmas, sent to us by David many years ago. He is the first decoration to go up each year.  Behind him on the tiny tree is a Danish paper-cut sent last year by our friend, Doreen, in Corner Brook.  He and we wish you a Happy New Year in 2014.

The Best of My Facebook Page 2013

These are the ones that got lotsa likes and comments: Cats and foolishness get the most. Few ever like the political rants, but ya gotta do it, so there is one.

Ron with Michael Pollan
 and Cabbage

Dec 4, 2013
Ron appeared at the top of the stairs thus, and asked me if he looked like a man seeking a religious experience. With "Bible" (Michael Pollan's "Cooked") in hand, he strode boldly forth into the kitchen to essay sauerkraut. "Why?" one might ask. We live in a province where good sauerkraut is readily available due to the perseverance of our German ancestors. Not good enough for Ron. He is truly, madly and deeply immersed in the hands-on study of bacterial life and useful rot. To date, the 30-hour 100% whole wheat and rye sourdough bread was a "superior comestible". I bet it will be cheese next. Blessed are the Cheesemakers.

Nov 29, 2013
As Ron sat in the day surgery waiting room at the hospital VERY early today, to face one of those unpleasant little procedures to which men of his age, and medical history, are often subjected, he read the New Yorker on his Iphone. When the nurse came to fetch him, he hit the wrong button. The phone did not close but burst forth quite audibly “What brings me here?” Emerging from the still-open New Yorker app was the voice of poet Gerald Stern reading his poem of that title in this week’s issue. The nurse remained stony-faced, but laughter spread down the row of waiting patients, some clad in johnny coats. How grateful are we, who reside in the laughing belly of the universe, for the little cosmic jokes that lighten us all on our hysterical descent into decrepitude.

Nov 15, 2013
These came from one of Dad's bridge-playing friends. I really like both of them. As one of the few WW2 veterans who can still make it up to the cenotaph, Dad is frequently called upon to lay wreathes. 

Elinor at the Ghostly
 Gala Storytelling Event

Nov 5, 2013
It's Giller Prize Day in Canada (Big literary prize) . Here is a little 6 degrees of separation story. In 1983, on my "Dance your way down the Nile" trip,  Doris Giller - yes, that very Doris Giller, in whose honour the prize was created,  a seasoned traveller, dragged a few of us to a perfumerie in the Khan El Khalili bazaar in Cairo, when we supposed to be content just sitting around the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn. It was an adventure. Ask me some day. Doris had come on the trip with a dancing friend. She was bold and funny, and book editor at the Montreal Gazette, so we had lots to talk about. We got lost in the City of the Dead together.  She found a great taxi driver who took us all kinds of places we would never have seen otherwise.  Back home, she picked me up for dinner in Montreal in a little red sports car, and told me to find myself a rich man instead mucking around with losers.  Me - I found a winner, don't you think? Thank you, Doris. Here I am with kohl eyes, blackened from the very pot I bought in the Khan that day. Is it toxic lead sulphide or soot and resin? Who knows? I use it only on very spooky occasions - like our Ghostly Gala at Cole Harbour Farm last week. Thank you Jill Hogg for the photo. It is cropped from a group photo which you can find on the Storytellers Circle of Halifax FB page.   Alas, poor Doris - she was a woman of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy, and gone too young.

Nov 1, 2013
You know you have a First World Cat when you spend more on her supplements than your own. This is Clara, known to us as Mummy. At least we get a nice photo from it. Our vet is a photographer, too. I expect we are on his FB page too.

Oct 31, 2013 - Yeah, I know. Grumpy Stuff - but it got published in the Chronicle Herald's Letter section. They don't publish everything I send.

Ah the Senate Scandal - brought to us by a politician who claimed to hate corruption and appointed Senates. Have I got it figured out right? As soon as we get elected, we cut taxpayers' contributions to political parties - a small amount based on # of popular votes. Then we hold our noses and appoint some friends to the disdained body and send them off to fund-raise for our own party - courtesy of the taxpayers. When our minions embarrass us by getting caught, we try to buy them off in secret, then turn on them and pretend we had nothing to do with it, and try to force the Senate to fire them, because, of course, we know nothing. and are arms length from it all. Rather smelly armpits! This circus is taking far too much of our energy and distraction from Real Issues - like silencing scientists and dissent and selling us out to foreign interests. It's interesting to observe that it doesn't take absolute power to corrupt absolutely. A mere taste will suffice.

Oct 14, 2013

Marilyn Sveen's portrait of David

Thanksgiving. We are grateful to have had David Richards in our lives. It made life more complex but somehow sweeter. We miss him and we thank everyone who extended condolances to us. This is a watercolour painted by his friend Marilyn Sveen. We have it framed now at our house. It is a picture that makes you smile whenever you look at it.

Aug 10, 2013

David at Indefinite Arts

This is a photo of Ron's brother, David, a few years back, working at In-Definite Arts, a wonderful programme in Calgary, that has artists working with people with a variety of physical and mental disabilities. David produced some amusing, and sometimes beautiful, objects. It looks like he is painting the dinosaur from the Flintstones which we have at our house. His favourite colours were green and purple. That's what I wore to the funeral. Our graveside service yesterday was all we could have hoped for. A dear friend, the mother of David's long-time roommate, who died in Feb read "Green Eggs and Ham" - David's all-time favourite, and it cheered us all. His old worn-out copy went into the niche with him. Ron told David's story and I sang All through the Night. Many people offered memories and stories both during the service and at the reception. Thank you to everyone who sent condolances.

Mar 13, 2013 
Thank you Tom Cochrane for this fantastic silhouette photo of Ron and me waltzing on Sunday night at The March Hare in Corner Brook - evidence that Sherman Downey can make the lame dance! - with enough wine and Tylenol.

Feb 9, 2013
Sam the Shredder's latest collage project. Yes, whenever Sam the Tabby wants to go out, he shreds paper.  Remember this is the cat who ate Alberta*. Here is his latest effort. I must say that his choice of subject matter displays a kind of perverse intelligence rarely seen in his species. The last thing he shredded was Adam Gopnik's article about Elaine Pagels new book on Revelations which Ron is reading currently.

* I left an atlas open to Albert on the sofa, and came back to discover the entire page had been chewed. This is a Newfoundland cat! 

Sam the Tabby's Collage Art