The Fabrics of Failed Intention

 - originally written in 2010, but still on topic, discovered in a de-cluttering effort on my computer in Fall 2016

How quickly and easily I avoided getting rid of anything last week. The provincial drama festival was in Corner Brook - six  nights of wonderful plays, presented amateur drama groups from across the province. The “amateur” is mostly in terms of their not being paid. The shows were good quality theatre, IMHO.  I can’t imagine anything like this happening in a larger place. Everyone knows everyone. Who knows what seething envies lurked beneath the surface, but the spirit of the festival seemed to be friendly competition, and enjoyment and appreciation of each other’s work. 

And so - I avoid facing  the Fabric of Failed Intentions for over a week, but the project now begins to take shape. There are two categories of fabric, one purchased by Selima, my alter-ego, former practitioner of the Obscure Anatolian Boogie, and the other by me. I used to enjoy sewing, but no longer do. My eyes are failing. Nice fabric is hard to find. Time is scarce. Needs are simpler. Clothing is far too cheap and far too available. And yet, I have 2 suitcases full of the  fabrics of failed intention, of which I plan to keep two metres of black silk crepe, and two other lengths of dress fabric, which I will have someone else make into dresses for me. The black silk crepe - ah well, since we no longer indulge in black silk crepe for funerary purposes, I hope to have it converted to the ultimate pair of chic black pants, which have so far evaded my grasp. 

Sewing ran in my family.  My maternal grandmother, Nanny,  was a seamstress, who  raised a  family of four with her sewing and money mailed by my grandfather, who left to work on the assembly lines of Detroit during the depression when my mother was four. Why the family didn’t go with him, is a mystery that has followed them all to the grave. One cousin said she refused to go, that she didn’t want to dislodge her children from Nova Scotia to raise them in a wicked American city, and that the marriage was not going all that well. Some said he just went off to work in the States because there was no work in Nova Scotia, plain and simple, not unlike what happens here in Newfoundland in 2010 where the money is sent home from the tar sands of Alberta. Whatever happened, the bottom fell out of industrial Nova Scotia even before the depression. My once prosperous native town of Amherst, on the edge of the Tantramar Marshes, had a piano factory, a foundry and Christie’s Luggage and Coffin Factory where my grandparents were working when they met. My grandfather was a carpenter building coffins, and my grandmother sewed the linings. They liked to go skating together on Christie’s Pond after work.

My Grandmother sewing in the 30's,
with a drawing on the black board made by by mother

The workers at Christie’s once played a trick on a woman who worked there and was known for  hitting on the men. They put a corpse in a coffin, crowded around it and waited for this woman to sidle her way among them. She ran off in horror. I can’t imagine how they had the corpse there in the factory unless it was connected to a funeral home. I’m sure it was not the corpse of my grandmother’s father-in-law, who died choking on a home-made donut from his lunch bucket.

This was one of the tales that came from my grandmother, who, for most of the time I knew her, was bedridden with MS. She was diagnosed at 29 in Montreal by the famous Dr. Wilder Penfield. My mother drew pictures of her at work. She always sewed with a mouthful of pins, and was famous for being able to copy any of the fashionable dresses in Margolians’ windows without using a pattern. 

In home economics class, I sewed horrid flannel pajamas with flat fell seams and dreary aprons that fit on hard plastic hoops that pinched your waist. At home, I sewed glamourous Oleg Cassini knock-off dresses for my dolls. I made a batik print shift  in secret, very beatnik I thought, and wore it to Greenwich Village when we sneaked to the city to go to coffee houses on Saturday afternoon, using our allowances for the commuter bus, and stood in line to get measured for Fred Braun sandals. After Doctor Zhivago came out, I made a double-breasted grey Russian military coat with Persian lamb trim and a matching hat on my treadle machine in the wretched Greenwich Village apartment I shared while a student at CCNY. The coat was long gone when a cat peed in the hat. When cats pee in furs hat there is no restitution; it was discarded.  I made my first husband a Maple Leaf tartan sport coat with the plaid matched very well. He had a pair of trousers made to go with it. His relatives in Norway were dismayed when they saw our wedding photo. “Poor Paulle - if we known he didn’t have enough money to buy a proper suit, we would have sent some.”  I made a pair of white jeans with an embroidered pocket - with flat fell seams stitched in red. They were, for their time, HOT. I probably was not, but I was young.

As Selima, the belly dancer, I had a voracious appetite for striped black and gold fabrics. Perhaps it started with the party dress my paternal  grandmother sent from Florida the Christmas we all had mumps and measles together in Amherst, and Nanny died. I scarcely remember opening my gifts in the darkened room, but when at last the light was turned on, there was an Oriental splendour of a dress, gold and black satin stripes, with a little black velvet bolero.  That grandmother also made beautiful smocked cotton dresses in pastel colours, which I liked because they felt good, not the nails-on-blackboard sensation of nylon party dresses, which I hated. She also bought me an orange polka-dot bikini when I was 15, and visiting her in Florida. 

Armed with my credit card, Selima bought miles of lame, chiffon, glittery knit, crushed velvet, sequins, beads, Indian voile, trim and costume coins and filled large plastic bins. Some of these were made into costumes, but then I got very sick, and lost my sewing groove. Now they are packed in a huge plastic storage tub in large freezer bags measured and priced for the next Belly Dance Soiree. What doesn’t sell will go to the SPCA garage sale. There are vintage costumes which will probably be shunned by current dancers. The beaded bra, belt, necklace and headpiece I spent 80 hours making are not among the collection, having been borrowed by a vain young student and never returned. Two beautiful paisley print silk chiffon veils have also vanished. Will anyone want the old-fashioned coin belt I made from large Australian pennies and brass bells? My first husband taught me to solder, operate a drill press and make strong chain link from brass rings. One night when I was dancing in a North Beach nightclub in San Franciso four chaps in the front row called out. “Are those Australian pennies,” in broad Aussie voices. “Right they are, mate,” I returned in my best imitation. I met them afterwards and we had a good laugh speculating on what the Queen would think of being shimmied about like that. It was probably a criminal act on my part to deface the royal coinage.  

Now, they wear cheap scarves trimmed with fake coins and beads. These scatter trimmings on the floor regularly in class, but my 40 year-old belt was built to outlast its owner, who outgrew it a long time ago. 

Dad's Birthday Cake - The Sequel

In the short period of time during which these less than cosmic events occurred, many terrible things happened in the world. Perhaps once in a while, a first world nano-drama offers respite and distraction from the horror. Two days ago I posted on Facebook that I had ruined Dad’s birthday cake. Here’s what happened. It was Ruth Reichl’s recipe for “Elvis Presley’s Favourite Poundcake”. This is a superior comestible and simple to make. What could go wrong? Three cups of sugar, creamed with a half a pound butter, seven eggs added one at a time, followed by vanilla, a cup of cream, cake flour, and then beaten violently for five minutes, into the pan, into the oven, wait an hour and – voila - a simple cake so rich that needs no gilding . BUT suppose you accidentally punch the “clear off” button as you’re putting the cake in the oven and setting the timer. You will then have baked a cake at no temperature whatsoever for an hour, and will open the door to - pancake batter?!! I banged my head on the fridge door. I howled, I wept but no tears would come. Ron said, “It’s alright we will go buy a cake tomorrow.” Wrong response!
I let go a bloodcurdling, film-noir scream as loud and as high as I could. Perhaps I should be alarmed: no neighbours called the cops and no one pounded on the door to tell me to stop creating a disturbance. I was probably drowned out by all the fans. Honestly, I felt better immediately. I recommend an utterly unfettered scream every now and then. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the desertion of the Kitchen God. Perhaps it had to do with a week of cleaning blood off the bathroom floor, bandaging elbows, quality emergency room time, and a dear almost-95-year old man who simply could not grok why he had this annoying and awkward thing on his hand. He had broken a small bone near the wrist. He had never had a cast in his life. I remember that perhaps he had cracked a few ribs on a fishing trip back in the 50s in New Brunswick, but neither one of us could remember anything else. The next day he had picked away at all the gauze around the half cast until he looked like a half plucked goose. Back to emergency . New cast. The technician said, “Next time, just cut the gauze if you think it’s too tight.”
The next night when I went into his room and he had undone all the gauze and there sat the cast on his desk. He said, “I didn’t think I needed it anymore.” I reapplied it and wrapped it myself. Then I made a big label with yellow highlights that said, “Do not remove. Remember: broken bone.” I fastened it around the cast. He thanked me. After that, the cast stayed on. It was a few days before we tackled: “The Shower” - with plastic bag on cast. That’s a different story.
Back to the cake. This is about the cake. Though it was 10:30 at night, and the kitchen still stifling, I turned the oven back on, put the cake back in and baked it for an hour. It was dense, but it is hard to make half pound of butter, a cup of cream and 3 cups of sugar taste that bad. Though not Proustian, it was worth keeping to make a trifle or something like that. In hindsight, I should’ve just turned on the griddle and made pancakes. I expect they would’ve been wonderful. I determined to make another one early in the morning. Ron dutifully went out fetched more cream. I was not happy to be using the oven on one of the hottest days of the summer with the cleaning lady about to arrive. Dad’s birthday is always the hottest, closest day of the summer. As I measured the sugar I discovered we were a half cup short and there was no sugar anywhere in the house. This has never happened before. Out to the store went Ron. He is a good man. The cake went in the oven. The cleaning lady arrived. I started churning the three different flavours of ice cream I had made the day before so we could have Neapolitan ice cream with the cake that night at my cousin Tony’s. The cake came out of the oven and I set it to cool. After the cleaning lady left, I upended it, but it was still not cool enough and came out of the pan looking like it had experienced something seismic. It was meant to be a simple, easily transported cake with no icing. It was also meant to have 9 and 5 candles on it to celebrate the years, but they were no longer on the counter where I had left them. Hmmm? I could not find them anywhere, but I did find the mixer beaters, not hermetically sealed in the running dishwasher as I had feared, but in the wrong drawer. I had egg whites left from making the ice cream and so I whipped up a batch of seven minute icing, a substance that has covered many a culinary fissure in my life, and probably others'. A complete search by Ron and I did not produce the candles any time in the next two hours. And thus the cake was iced and balanced on my lap over all the potholes en route from our house to Tony’s along with nine old birthday candles that had been moldering in the drawer since Heaven knows when. As Nora Ephron says: “Everything is copy” or at least batter. If I decide to try out the recipe as pancakes some day cooler, I’ll let you know how they turn out.

Shredding - or Shedding - Selima

Selima's last stand, ca 2005

How do we part with our younger selves?  We hope to do it with more grace than Miss Havisham of Great Expectations.  Some parts of my life seem so far away now as to be nothing but stories I tell. I am grateful that I was not a war criminal or something equally horrible that could be ascribed to "another" life.  I did little more harm than practice The Obscure Anatolian Boogie, as my ex-husband once called it in anger.  It was a great passion, which contributed to the downfall of that marriage, but brought some little wisdom, and many friends and experiences, including a trip down the Nile with a group of the similarly addicted.

I had studied with the legendary Jamila Salimipour in San Francisco in the '70's. Jamila knew how to teach and inspire the movement known as American Tribal Belly Dance.  It was quite a cult. I did not make it into the inner circle of her votaries, true believers, nor of the Mother Goddess's, which seemed to be part of the the package.  Though Jamila told a friend of mine that I wasn't made of the material of professional dancers, I was welcomed into another dance group run by one of Jamila's stars, the stunning Nakish, and performed with her group to the music  of the equally legendary drummer Vince Delgado, his wife, Mimi Spencer, and his daughter Devi-ja; both women died of cancer far too young. I took drum lessons from Vince, learning enough to understand the music a little  better. Their music was wonderful, and they were lovely to be with, as were the other dancers. I stayed friends with one to this day. 

I went to two workshops run by Jamila's daughter, Suhaila Salimpour, in Toronto in this century and both after My Big Illness of  2004, When I mentioned to Jamila's daughter,that I had not been one of the favoured, she laughed and said, "Maybe you didn't give her presents."  It hadn't occurred to me at the time. Suhaila was right!  Jamila was right. I certainly did not have the constitution to endure the slings and arrows of working in nightclubs, and dealing with sleazy club-owners, and thereby hang a few tales of folly. I had a ring-side seat at the underside of San Francisco's North Beach and Tenderloin districts. If I were a writer  ...   My life in "Show Business" can be summed up with a simple anecdote:  the  gig that paid $35 resulted my breaking a front tooth with a finger cymbal, requiring a $150 crown. It always seemed to work that way.  My first and favourite job paid $5.00 a night - a Persian restaurant in Oakland, run by two very nice Irani gentlemen. I cannot remember names now, but there were backgammon boards, a pleasant customers, and sometimes one of the brothers would play his drum and sing what I now realize was probably very old and traditional poetry.They gave me my stage name, "Selima", which was their grandmother's name. At the end of the night we would all eat the crunchy, buttery bits of rice at the bottom of the pilaf pot.  

 I danced for friends in Denmark and England, when I left my San Francisco life for the obligatory post-divorce travels in Europe and found a sisterhood of dancers in Ottawa, when I returned to Canada to stay with my parents and to save up to go to library school. 

I discovered I had some talent for teaching this beautiful dance while I was at library school in Ontario back in 1977, where I was recruited to teach one class a week  in an adult evening program. It kept me sane during that insane year. 

On stage at the Arts and Culture Centre
 in Corner Brook in the mid 80's

I brought the dance to Corner Brook, Newfoundland, when I was hired by the Newfoundland Public Libraries to be the district administrator for the West Coast. Corner Brook had a Lebanese community. They understood what I was doing but few others did. I became known as the belly-dancing librarian. I loved my dual personality and I was not alone. It wasn't long before the Internet appeared and I found a sisterhood of belly-dancing librarians.There is a vast literature out there on the topic, some of it quite hysterical. Consider the  florid text of the Amazon blurb for  John Norman's Dancer of Gor 

Doreen Williamson is a quiet, shy librarian on Earth. Like many other young women, she is distrustful of her attractions, frightened of men, introverted in manner and sexually inhibited. She lives within a quiet, lonely, dissatisfying, sheltered, frustrated desperation, distant from her true self, her nature denied, her only friends books and her secret thoughts. In the realization and enactment of a profound fantasy, after acute self-conflict, she dares to study a form of dance in which she is at last free to move her body as a female, a form of dance in which she may revel in her beauty and womanhood, a form of dance historically commanded by masters of selected, suitable slaves: belly dance. She must then dance, for the first time, before men. In doing so, she discovers her own desirability and that she may be well bid upon. Rediscover this brilliantly imagined world where men are masters and women live to serve their every desire.

In your dreams, Mr. Norman!  I  think I can safely say I have never lived to serve anyone's every desire.  

I began to teach in Corner Brook.  I loved teaching. I loved analyzing what people were doing with their bodies and trying to find new metaphors to explain how to improve each movement.  Occasionally I went away to workshops, including the one on the Nile, and two with Suhaila. Eventually, I had enough students to form a little performing group, which we called the Turkish Delights. I loved my students, women of a variety of ages, all in the middle of life in its various manifestations.  Marriage, child birth, divorce, major injuries and illnesses visited us.  

Somehow the bond formed by our group helped us through these. 

After a  a life-changing illness of my own - a Staph infection, I tried to keep going, but in spite of the tremendous support of the group, it became too much. I was grateful when a native Corner Brook woman returned from Ontario where she had studied belly dance with a good teacher during her recovery from cancer, and was keen to share what she knew. The timing was good. One of the projects I'd undertaken just before I got sick  was to attempt to create Isis wings for all my group  (see above). These wondrous creations are circular veils which  attach to a band at the neck and have dowels in the two side hems, which can be manipulated in great spiraling circles as you dance.  Everyone was enchanted with the ones I had bought from a professional in New York, and wanted their own but they were very expensive. I used my set as a pattern. I spent many hours crawling about the floor with yards and yards of organza, cutting out giant circles and hemming them, which I am sure used up miles of thread. 

After much experimentation and expenditure of money and time, I discovered I could have them pleated by a professional pleating Company in Toronto. The first quote I got was from a group in Montréal, who returned my first set saying they were too large for their pleating machines.  I took one set in person to a company in Toronto, then sent eight more sets to be done later when I found they could handle it. The dance I was supposed to choreograph was sabotaged by my illness and the dynamic in our group had shifted. Everyone had agreed to pay for the wings, but when they finally arrived, people had drifted away, and only a few  of my faithful adherents actually purchased them - probably more out of kindness to me - and recognizing the investment I had made. I managed to perform a dance with the gold ones I had purchased after I "recovered" from the infection, and one of my students had a friend at art school who wanted to make a short film of the dance and interview me. I agreed to do this provided that I would be given a copy of the video. With a great deal of effort I got my act together for the filming; the student was unhappy with the quality of her photography and asked if we could do it again. With even more effort and pain, I managed to oblige, but my student who was supposed to give me a copy of the video never delivered it, and also went away with my best costume, which I had loaned her -  a minor betrayal in the cosmic sense, but a disappointment,  because it would've been one of the few pieces of evidence for my old age to prove what I had done in my flaming youth, which by then, was pretty well burnt down. But it has been my habit to practice ephemeral arts. 

The garden is going on without me. Here are some of the earlier group and some new additions performing my choreography to Zagharuta Helwa by Maza Meze of Toronto at the International Women's Night dinner in Corner Brook, which it was my pleasure to attend several years ago when I went back for a March Hare week-end. 

 I greatly respected my teachers and loved the dance, and I believe I conveyed that to the many audiences for whom I performed for over 25 years.

As for the now unfortunately named "Isis" Wings, the rest of them sat in my closet for years, and moved with us to Nova Scotia while I tried to think of what to do with them. Then Randi, a dear dancer friend from Ottawa, came to visit and when she saw the wings she said they would be perfect for the Propeller Dance Troupe in Ottawa. I knew Propeller Dance. It had been co-founded by a storytelling friend, Alan Shain. Their motto is "If you can breathe, you can dance." I knew this would be the perfect home for the wings so I packed them in a huge plastic tub an entrusted them to the bus. In September, Randi sent an email with the attached photo of the wings - now alive and flying again. My heart soars with them. To read more about this wonderful organization see http://propellerdance.com/

PS Added Feb 2, 2025
  I have no videos of my dance life other than a bad digitization of an old VHS home movie, converted to DVD than onward. This was long before the ubiquitous recording ability we have today. It is like the old Nasruddin story, "the soup of the soup of the soup." My favourite part has always been playing the finger cymbals. I cannot seem to imbed it on this page, but you should be able to reach it with this link. 

Selima's Dance at Julie Rank's Dance Studio Recital 1987

"South Riding" by Winifred Holtby - an excellent read

   I’ve just finished as satisfying a novel as I have read in a long time: "South Riding" by Winifred Holtby, published in 1936. I don’t read a lot of fiction these days, but I like to follow coincidence where its leads. It started with seeing the recent film version of the early part of Vera Brittain’s autobiography “Testament of Youth,” a book which I’d had on my reading list for a long time. It should be required reading for everyone who thinks there is anything glorious or desirable about war. From there, I became curious about the group of women students who ended up with Vera Brittain at Somerville House, Oxford, after World War I, and their service in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) of the Red Cross. And thus, I came to Winifred Holtby who died at age 37, four months after finishing this book, which became a best-seller, and vow to read more of the books re-published by Virago Press. Oxford professor, Valentine Cunningham, has praised Virago for “trawling most impressively and fruitfully in the novel catalogues" of the 1930s for women's fiction to reprint.” This is a good place to start. 

    According to Brittain’s daughter who wrote the preface, “South Riding” was born of two powerful factors in Holtby’s life: her deep roots in the Yorkshire country side and her fascination with the comedies and tragedies of local government.” Holtby’s own mother had been deeply involved in municipal politics. As Mrs. Beddows, one of the novel’s most sympathetic characters, observes: “All this local government, it’s just people working together - us ordinary people, against the troubles that afflict us all ” - hardly the stuff one associates with great literature, but then as now, it is often at this level, that concrete things are accomplished. The tensions of conservative and progressive vie with opportunism and less than noble motives to produce enough drama to engage the reader from chapter to chapter. In the process of shedding light on a range of social issues such as education, unemployment, building projects, poor relief and the mental hospitals, Holtby has created a large cast of believable and complex characters, who experience life in all its varied joys and sorrows. Sarah Burton, a veteran of the nursing volunteers in WW1, the chaotic 20's, and principal of the local girl’s high school life is a graduate of Cambridge. She is convinced of her progressive principles, but her situation brings her into conflict with the local gentry, represented by Robert Carnes, a noted sportsman. It is slowly revealed that in the post-war period, the life of the gentry is in flux, as is Carnes' own life. 

   Sarah is well aware that the possibility of war has not been removed in spite of her advocacy of the League of Nations, an activity shared by both Holtby and Brittain. Throughout the novel there are hints of the growing dangers posed by Germany and Hitler. Holtby and Brittain had experienced young fascists first hand in their travels in Europe.
The novel reaches its conclusion as the community is set to celebrate the 25th Jubilee of George V. Sarah, cynical of such “ballyho”, finds herself caught up anyway in spite of receiving a letter from a socialist friend who has left the municipal government to fight on a larger stage: 

"I can’t rejoice here. We have miles of docks with grass growing between the truck lines. Men I used to know as the finest workmen in the world, skilled artisans, riveters, engineers, are rotting on the dole. Oh, no, they don’t starve; but they suffer from heart disease, T.B., and worst of all, perhaps, hopelessness. And the tragic sickening fact is that their only chance of re-employment lies in this arms race. They can return to life only by preparing for death."

From the perspective of the 21st century, many of us perceive the two decades between the two great wars as a mere cease-fire in the proceedings of international carnage, and find ourselves hopelessly watching the loss of meaningful work for so many people on the planet, and the near enslavement of others. In my own country, where we’ve heard recently of both government and unions trying to quash news of an enormous job-creating arms deal with Saudi Arabia, these words are as fresh as when they were written.

South Riding was made into a BBC mini-series in 2011. I think I’ll have a look for it.

Annual Foolishness 2014

Dear Kith and Kin

Hurray! the  quilt square I contribute every year to the quilt we raffle to raise money for Storytellers of Canada’s recording project is in the mail to Alberta.  For the story of the inspiration for quilt and this year’s Annual Foolishness Greeting Header- a quote from a 14th century English mystic named Julian of Norwich  - a woman actually, see details on my other blog http://elinorbenjamin.blogspot.ca  There are stories and pictures of  previous quilts on our website http://www.storytellers-conteurs.ca/quilt.html   

With God’s help and a toothpick - as my Aunt Ruth used to say -  I will soon be free of my marathon stint as webmaster of this organization. This escape has been slower than the lava flow from Kilauea.  

Our Dartmouth Choral Society (DCS) concert was a great success yon Dec 7th. You can hear our exit number at  https://soundcloud.com/dartmouthchoralsociety/hearth-and-fire.   I’ve sung another Kurt Weill song  - Youkali - at my singing teacher’s end of term recital to positive feedback. A field recording exists as proof but is not going on YouTube. I also sang an “amusing”, and almost unknown, Irving Berlin number at DCS’s 60th birthday party - That Mesmerising Mendelssohn Tune (1909). It has a very slight YouTube presence, probably the measure of its worth, but it was suitable for the occasion as we were singing a Mendelssohn piece at our concert.  I should now aspire to learning a real song by  Mendelssohn. Now, at last, I can think about getting Annual Foolishness up and running and get some Christmas cards out into the world before Groundhog Day.

I’m still waiting for that Wordsworthian moment of tranquillity in which to reflect upon the emotions of 2014, but it’s not happening. That, dear kith and kin, is why I write prose instead of poetry. Be grateful -  very grateful!  I used to write bad poetry in my youth. Ron just arrived home with the first box of clementines this season.  Each of us remembers the citrus of childhood. In my case, the exotic tangerines came shipped from my grandfather’s orchard in Florida to frigid northern New Brunswick in a wicker hamper. Greater suspense proceeded the basket of grapefruit, fancy oranges, tangerines and the kumquats, than the safe arrival of Santa, who, after all, was comfortable with northern climes. Would the fruit arrive without having been frozen en route?  Not always. I once got in a fight with a boy in grade 5 - a smart-aleck from Montréal whose mother had a mink coat - who tried to tell me that kumquats were a kind of nut. I knew my citrus, even though I ‘minds’ that it was a rare thing in ‘them days’.  In Ron’s youth, mandarins from China arrived on the West Coast and thence to Calgary. I suppose if mandarins came from China, tangerines must originally have come from Tangiers. Wouldn’t you think clementines should come from Clemencey?  Perhaps you wouldn’t. This box says Maroc and we will enjoy them anyway. We seldom see mandarins around here - unless you count that crowd in Ottawa :-(  

What has happened to the globe since last I wrote?  So much grief in the world, it seems impossible it can be contained on one small planet, and occasionally, an item of note such as The European Space Agency’s landing a robot on a comet - the equivalent of landing a mosquito on a speeding bullet, as I heard one commentator observe - an astonishing feat, even though the robot is now in a shadow and has lost its power.  I’m not sure how much humanity benefits from sort of thing, but you never can tell. It certainly does not benefit from the never-ending terror, torture and intimidation, any more than it did when my ancestors were beheading and/or being beheaded for reading the Bible in English - not so very long ago in the history of the world. 

Our Dear Leader is basking in the glory of having one of the Franklin Expedition ships discovered on his watch. Much money was poured into this project to ensure it would happen on his watch, perhaps the money “saved” by slashing and burning many other less projects with less mythic potential, like the CBC, services to our new war veterans, or research on how to avoid the more extreme effects of global warming. They have already admitted they were doing it to assert Arctic sovereignty. I suspect that it is more about “seeking gold and glory” than our sharing our wonderment with Stan Rogers at “hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.”  It’s part of Canadian mythology. By coincidence, a day later we accompanied Dad to a rather odd, almost secret, ceremony hosted by Veterans’ Affairs  where we met the personable, Rear Admiral John Newton, just home from the Franklin discovery; we enjoyed hearing his first hand account. His enthusiasm was infectious. Media representation was curiously thin - perhaps through fear of ministerial gaffes? - which do abound, frequently, from the minister involved.  We were not alone in wondering when this event might surface as a photo op to offset the public outcry at the our government appalling treatment of our current veterans. Ron heard a cynical grumble from one of the elderly vets he encountered in the loo. I confess, I ate the sumptuous hors d'oeuvre, swallowing my guilt, thinking of homeless veterans a few blocks away, and enjoyed the lovely woodwind quintet, too. Canada has added a few members to the club of celebrities falling from grace, which, of course, offers great distraction from Canada’s larger failings on the world stage - especially on the environmental front.  It is hard to remain unaffected by all the noise. Mercifully, we are among the fortunate to have found a few things to keep ourselves somewhat distracted until it all falls apart. 

With Dad, Pete Luckett and
Aunt Doris, now 90

We haven’t strayed far this year. We don’t like leaving Dad on his own, but there is lots to do right here in Nova Scotia, and we did enjoy some company - especially stragglers from my storytelling conference. When Dad was visiting my brother in New Brunswick, we  had a mini-vacation visiting Annapolis Valley wineries and stayed in a beautifully situated B & B near Cape Split. Lunch on the terrace of Luckett’s vineyard in Gaspereau, overlooking the World Heritage approved view of the Bay of Fundy on a beautiful sunny day in August is about as good as it gets anywhere. We took Dad and my Aunt Doris for lunch in September but it was a little chillier then. They provide blankets. Pete greeted us in person at the door. He started his career as a vegetable barrow man, then became a charming presence at the Saint John, NB market, a TV personality, an entrepreneur of an upscale grocery in Bedford with branches in Halifax and Wolfville, and finally launched his own vineyard - which is, I think, a great passion. What fun he seems to be having.  A worthy immigrant!! - from Nottingham.   Annapolis Valley white wines are getting better every year, but more expensive than their foreign competitors. We buy them anyway. There is a very exciting producer located at Benjamin Bridge, site of an ancestral saw mill operation. We have nothing to do with the vineyard, alas. They are producing some spectacular sparkling wines in the traditional style, but we can’t afford the most spectacular. The lesser ones are still very good. 

Marthe Bernard, Mary-Lynn Bernard, Andy Jones,
Elinor Benjamin and Kate Sanders,
The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Mar 15, 2014
after our children's show.

I got to the March Hare in Corner Brook, always a time of re-connection with many dear , dear people like those on the left.  I took a short trip to New York for a workshop with my storytelling mentor, Laura Simms, which included a “field trip” to the weekly storytelling session at the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central Park, quick visits with my two high school friends in Westchester and New Jersey and a wonderful lunch with a bedsitter flatmate from my days in London  (Eeek!  1976?) and his lovely wife, whom I had never met. They live in Nyack, very close to Pearl River, where I went to High School. I  also went to Ottawa for a week-end to hear the Ottawa storytellers present their day-long epic telling of The Iliad, and visit more friends.  All this was stupendous. 

Kith and Kin at the Shore Inn,
Hubbard's, for Dad's 93th Birthday July 27.

Ron’s only venture out of the Maritimes, alas, was to fly to Calgary for the funeral of Ron Stevens, a dear friend since elementary school. That was a shock for everyone. He was able to stay another day and spend it with Ron’s wife, Phyllis, whom he has known since university days. Our family has lost a major elder - Dad’s cousin Allen, who was living in Florida. He was the family historian, and published his results in a little book which we have all cherished for years. This leaves Dad as the last of 10 Benjamin  cousins still alive, which has to be a little strange. We celebrated his 93rd birthday in July with a lobster supper at the Shore Club in Hubbard’s. As a result of the memorial service for Allen, we had the opportunity to become better acquainted with a number of relatives and finally got to see the old family burial plot in Brookfield, and visit Allen's son and wife in Pugwash.  I hope I can find the cemetery again. If you are reading this on my blog, you can go back to August and read the tribute I delivered at Allen’s memorial service. 

A 4-pounder to share at the
New Glasgow Lobster Supper

My annual storytelling conference was in nearby Prince Edward Island. We took Dad with us there, and spent a few days afterwards eating and visiting friends and relations, partaking of summer theatre, and an old Richards family tradition:  the lobster supper in New Glasgow, the village where Ron’s mother was born.  It is truly the best we’ve had anywhere. At the conference, I took advantage of my little spot on the conference programme to tell Pete Seeger’s version of Dick Whittington and his Cat;  it is a kinder and gentler version, less a legendary testament to capitalist speculation. It seemed like the right thing to do. Pete Seeger was a sublime inspiration to so many of us - a life to be celebrated, remembered and emulated. Too bad the efforts to get him a Nobel Peace Prize did not succeed. 

Undoubtedly, one thrill this year was organizing a successful concert for Laura Simms at the St. Mary’s Art Gallery which took place in the midst of Dartmouth Artist,Rose Adams’ wonderful 25 year retrospective Bird, Bones and Brains, an inspiration for an exciting evening of storytelling with a good crowd.  Our friend, Michael Parker is part of a group called Musikon. They produce several concerts a year of contemporary Canadian music at the Gallery, which is where I got the idea. Their recent conference presented during a wonderful show called Camp Fire: Queer Baroque   http://thechronicleherald.ca/artslife/1250878-musikon-goes-crazy-for-baroque

Another highlight was singing with Canta Mara, a once-a-year choir organized by the Nova Scotia Choral Federation to participate in a workshop and “Big Sing” with a guest choir. This year it was the splendid Elmer Iseler Singers, from Toronto. You get the music in advance, practice on your own, and show up for a day-long rehearsal 9:00 am - 9:00 pm with the Choir’s director Lydia Adams and Assistant Director Mitchell Cady, “ready to make music.”  Then you sing with them in a concert the next day.  Ron had a mathematician friend, sadly gone, who was a fine jazz pianist, who stated that one of his life’s ambitions was to be good enough to “play with the black guys”.  It’s one of those useful little catch phrases that crops up on various occasions in our lives when the subject of excellence comes up.  After the concert Ron  said: “You were singing with the black guys.”  Actually, all I did was pay for the workshop, which was a bargain, spend a week closeted with the music and YouTube, and get myself to the rehearsal, but I did feel ready to make music with a grand group of people.  It was a uplifting experience. 

Canta Mara and Elmer Iseler Singers with honoured audience member,Scott Jones, the young choir director from Nova Scotia who was so badly injured in a hate attack last year, and who has become such a inspiration with his “Don’t be Afraid” campaign. I’m in middle row, 2nd from left behind piano. Lydia Adams is in front with Scott. 

Ron’s had some lyrical moments this year, too. His performing group, the Thistle Dancers performed a nearly error-free version of a difficult dance, The Saltire Cross, at St. Matthews Church Summer Noon Concert Series. This is the church where Wayne Rogers is the musical director, and coincidentally the church in the picture above as well. I sang in several of Wayne's choirs when we both lived in Corner Brook. As the non-dancing "groupie",  I  shot the video. They were the first group to post it on You Tube:

He also performed at Government House where: Their Honours were pleased to welcome the Jane Austen Society of North America (NS) and the Playford Dancers for a fascinating presentation on the enduring fascination of Jane Austen and her world.  
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lieutenantgovernor/13630775253/in/photostream/

He’s also had very positive feedback on his skills at “briefing” dances, from a real Scottish Dance Expert 

My First Selfie

Bits of Constantine   

My first Selfie:  Chanelling a body part remaining from the huge statue of Emperor Constantine in the Capitoline Museum, to express my opinion on the microbe that invaded my arm after carpal tunnel surgery in May.  Actually - not  quite the first. Years ago I took a picture  of my toes in the Roman Bath at Bath with a film camera. A what? !  ? ?   Constantine employs a different one of the 250 known Italian hand gestures than I have chosen.  Care to speculate?   The Turkish marble in our bathroom was as close as I could get it get to the original setting. Speaking of body parts, I am now on “The List” for a knee replacement, as are half the people I know. Could be an up to two years wait, but I’m not exactly that enthusiastic to engage in more surgery. I still have to get the other carpal tunnel done.

The silver lining of illness is permission to be slothful. I went on a Josephine Tey binge while recovering from the infection. Having the complete works on my Kindle was a “deal” and didn’t require two hands to hold. I read my favourite, Daughter of Time, once again (3rd or 4th time?), and as for the others I have the kind of memory that never remembers who dunnit, which means I can re-read  favourites over and over again and still enjoy them. This enforced “rest” period, also brought on a indulgent week of Netflix binge-ing - including the entire House of Cards series. I should have been watching and reading more upbeat and edifying material, no?  It makes you wonder if there are any honest people anywhere in positions of power.  I tried reading a bestseller, a Joy Fielding novel, and made myself finish it even though it was boring. One of the non-boring books I read was Raj Patel’s  The Value of Nothing. He tells why a McDonald’s hamburger really costs us all $250 - if you add the taxpayer subsidies to agribusiness, food stamps and social assistance that enable corporations to get away with paying such appallingly low wages. There were some things that Adam Smith didn't even predict. Observant as he was, who could have predicted the amoral multi-national corporation beholden to no one. Aha!  Eisenhower did.  I read Adam Smith while in the hospital 10 years ago with the Real Infection. Quite a charming writing style, too, and not too large a tome for holding in a weakened state. Each chapter is a concrete little nugget, good for one sitting.  His  ideas have been co-opted and corrupted, just like every other wise man's.  Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda, a novel based on re-telling the story of  the first contact between the Jesuits and Hurons in a new light, was high on my list this year - a most worthy addition to Canadian canon. My cousin, Chris Benjamin, has just published Indian School Road on the shameful history of the residential school in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, another sad chapter in the long history of imperialism and cultural destruction. Then - on to a life of self-destruction Savage Beauty, a life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford. And even more grim, I turned to The Rape of Europa by Lynn Nicholas. I haven’t seen The Monuments Men, the film that was based on the real events, but I cannot imagine it could reproduce in the time of a film, all the evil. Oh my dears, imperialism, cultural destruction, and looting art are nothing new under the sun - obelisks, Elgin Marbles, Roman horses nicked from Constantinople, etc, etc  - but the scale was unimaginably Byzantine. The 20th century was pretty unimaginable, and the 21st looks to be shaping up to follow closely in its tracks. If people think they can get away with things, they will certainly try. I continue to send grumpy letters to editors, and government ministers and the PM, and post links to outrages on  Facebook. I am turning into a fine old termigant. People prefer my cat photo and food postings, and who could blame them. 

Our household is diminished. Who would believe that we would be down to one cat in one year. The two elders, Clara and Sam, “dwindled,” as our friend Lorraine puts it, after having lived respectably long lives for their species, but bouncy little Amanda, acquired a mysterious infection at age 12, and we lost her suddenly, in the spring, just before Clara. We think Otis, the orange one, the survivor, may still be in shock, or a state of gratitude. Unfortunately we can’t tell which. The week before Thanksgiving 1) we took Sam to the vet, and he did not return home; 2) I went away with my friend, Kira, to the wonderful Singing Storytellers Symposium in Cape Breton, and did not come home for a week; 3) Ron took Dad to the hospital after a dizzy spell and fall, the day after I left, and left him there overnight - he was rescued by a caring postman who brought him home and came by later to follow up. Who will do things like that in the new Canada, the one that Harper promised we “won’t recognize?” ; and 4) Ron and Dad drove to Cape Breton to fetch me, and stayed overnight for Thanksgiving dinner with Ron’s relatives. All of these departures in one week left Otis an altered beast. We are not quite ready to commit our hearts  to acquiring and vetting a new feline, but are going to take in a winter boarder for a few months while his owners go south after Christmas - a cuddly, long-haired black fellow of 17 named Denver. He has been over one afternoon for a play date, and no blood was shed, and he is here for a sleepover as I write. 

We are, all three of us  “dwindling,” but are generally in good spirits and grateful for the good life we live in our cozy little house in Dartmouth. Our community contains its measure of the evils of the world - and the good, too.  For now, we stave off despair over necessary losses with the things that keep us all afloat - family,  friends, good company and the arts. We wish that - All will be well  - with you this Season and in the coming year. 

Elinor (and Ron and Bob and Otis)

This portrait of Claire/Clara mainly know as "Mummy" was painted by my new "cousin-in-law-in-law" Janet Warnes-Morris. She is a retired primary art teacher.

And below is the one she did of Amanda. Why won't blogger let me space these pictures the way I want them :-(  


Here we are with Sam the day in October when the vet confirmed that he had cancer.

and poor Otis, our sole survivor. 

He didn't like having his picture taken by the vet.

Remembering Allen Benjamin, Family Historian

Remembering Allen Benjamin, Family Historian  Nov 3, 1920 - Jul 25, 2014
Spoken at Wyndholme Christian Church, Aug 7, 2014

I first wish to express my condolences to Rod, Scott, Jamie on the loss of their father and to all other members of the family. A special thank you, Rod for asking me to say a few words today. I didn’t know him well in my early years, but later, especially after he married my Aunt Shirley, and became not only my first cousin once-removed, but my uncle by marriage, we connected over our interest in genealogy. That is mostly what I will tell you about today. I do have fond memories of Allen and Shirley showing up in their RV at  my doorstep in Corner Brook, with a huge salmon they had acquired from a fisherman by who knows what sort of negotiations. At the time I didn’t have a big enough pot, but we got ‘er cooked anyway. Dad tells stories of riding his bicycle from Brookfield, with Cousin Fred, to visit John and Allen in Dartmouth. In those days, that was a bumpy trip. 

I’d like to read an email from Bruce Benjamin, also a cousin-once removed, who is presently en route to Winnipeg for work.

I have always been so very grateful of Allen’s massive undertaking regarding our family tree and his publishing and sharing of the book and 'tree' booklet with the coat of arms. Countless times I've been able to proudly state a long lineage in Nova Scotia, and in fact back to 1598 in Kent, England. I've not actually met many people that can do a similar ancestral reflection. When I recite the trip of John and Abigail Benjamin, their ages, the date, the name of the ship, etc., [that brough them to North America in 1632] jaws typically drop a little and their eyes do a wee gloss-over with amazement.  Allen  supplied me with copies of the booklet to give to my sons who also take pride in their roots and a gratification to have such a fine resource at their fingertips. I hope it's a great gathering, my thoughts will be there.

With Bruce’s message in hand, I am confident, that I am speaking on behalf of all the Benjamin family when I say how lucky we are to know the story of how we came to be  Nova Scotians of  the 21st century.  I am always sad to hear of people who cannot find their stories. Stories of people finding their long-lost relatives make for some of the more uplifting shows on television these days.  I can’t think of a more intimate and enjoyable way to learn history than to know how you fit into it - for good or ill - and that is the gift that Allen bequeathed to our entire family. As I talk, I shall quote  generously  from Allen’s booklet Obadiah Benjamin of Nova Scotia.  

Allen began his project to trace the Nova Scotia Benjamins because of  a promise to his bachelor Uncle Frank, who spent many years collecting and making notes in an effort to trace his own  grandfather, James Harvey Benjamin of Gay’s River. When Frank died in 1967, Allen received the notes but couldn’t begin the job until he retired from his career as professional photographer in 1972. Looking back to the work of Uncle Frank and Allen in the age before the internet, I stand in awe. 

To Frank’s notes, Allen added the power of the Public Archives, the telephone and the car. His son, Jamie, collected all the Nova Scotia phone books and listed all the Benjamin phone numbers he could find. Then came conversations and cups of  tea enjoyed  around the province with people pleased to share their wealth of information and stories. Every now and then I have found myself in a conversation with people like Gloria Fisher (nee Benjamin), long-time proprietor of Fisher’s Stationery Store on Portland Street who remembers Allen in the days when he was “on the trail.”  

The Benjamins were not the first tribe to enjoy this pleasant land. As is so often the case in history, the first Benjamins came as part of a wave of immigration that displaced others -  in our case, the Acadians, expelled by the British in 1755, after over a hundred years of settlement upon land previously inhabited by the first nation peoples. It seems the British had not considered that expelling the people who supplied your food might be not be the wisest way to colonize.  “Thus, an announcement of free lands in Nova Scotia was published in the Boston Gazette in April 1759. Meetings were held and an agent sent to Nova Scotia to inspect ...  He reported that the land was of excellent quality with fruit trees and upland fields of flax and corn and dyke lands growing five tons of hay per acre. “ And that was how Allen’s 4th great grand-father, Obadiah Benjamin, and his first wife, Mary Hurd,  arrived from Preston, Connecticut at Horton’s Landing on June 4th  1760 with 22 boat loads of other settlers known to history as the New Englander Planters. You can visit the modest memorial cairn by taking a right turn onto Horton Crossing road, a little before the Just us Coffee Shop in Grand Pre, then right again onto Railway Street onto Wharf Road which ends at a farm. Then, you will have to walk into the middle of a farmer’s field. I am sure you will be walking in Allen’s footsteps. I know I am walking in them as I wander through the old graveyards in Noel Shore, Wolfville and Scott’s Bay. I followed them further onto the internet in the 80's when access to the huge Mormon data base was free. Although I learned many facts, I do  envy Allen those cups of tea and the stories shared in country parlours and kitchens with living people. 

One of the amusing facts I came upon, which I am sure that Allen would enjoy,  was that we - like 20% of North Americans - have our  Mayflower Ancestor - one  John "Billington, Allen’s 8th great-grandfather, my 9th.  Billington was  an ancestor Obadiah’s wife, Mary Hurd. He was not of the puritan faith, but one of a number of other travellers on the Mayflower, and known both aboard the vessel and in the Plymouth colony as a “troublemaker”.  In September 1630 he was tried by a jury and hanged for the murder of John Newcomen, whom he saw as an enemy. This was the first such execution in the new  colony, confirming the opinion of another New Englander, Ralph Waldo Emerson, that  “Man is physically, as well as metaphysically, a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.”  

The stories collected and recorded by Allen prove the astuteness of Emerson’s observation, and demonstrate the great variety of lives lived by the many descendants of one of Nova Scotia’s English-speaking pioneers, as they moved on from the difficulties of pioneer life to the challenges of our own interesting times. The Benjamins have transformed from being a close-knit tribe in the Valley to a family enriched with new members from around the world.

As we join here today to remember our family historian, Allen, you will, no doubt,  be recalling your own stories of his time among us, and I hope we’ll be hearing a lot of them.  To quote the wisdom of Doctor Who   ...  we’re all stories in the end.

Elinor Benjamin

The link to the Chronicle Herald Obituary is no longer active. Here is the text of the Obituary published on July 31st ?

R. Allen Benjamin

Robert Allen Benjamin passed on peacefully in The Cloisters Retirement Community in Deland, Fla., on July 25, 2014, at the age of 93. Allen was born on November 3, 1920, in Brookfield, to Stairs Benjamin and Frances Helen (Titus) Benjamin. In his youth after his family moved to Dartmouth, Allen was active in Scouting; he and his brother John were the first in Dartmouth to become King's Scouts. Later he was active in the Kiwanis and the Maritime Professional Photographers Association. Allen was an entrepreneur and local pioneer in photography, a passion of his from an early age. His father having died young, Allen started early making a living.  Being disqualified from the Military for  health reasons he took several newspaper routes, hiring friends to assist as needed.  At the age of 17, with a staff of 12, he opened the first photo-finishing laboratory in. Dartmouth. He also had exciting times in press  photograahy;  being on the VE  Day riots and the Bedford Magazine explosion.  After studying photography in New York City,  he opened the first photographic business in Dartmouth, with studios and shops in several locations over the years. He also owned several apartment buildings around. Dartmouth.  

Upon his retirement he devoted his time to researching the history of the Nova Scotia branch of the family,  from its arrival in America in 1632 and its roots prior to that.  He published his findings in the booklet, "Obediah Benjamin of Nova Scotia".  He relocated to Florida and remarried,  spending his time in travel  and enjoying retirement.  He was predeceased by his daughter, Wanda; brother, John and wife Shirley (Roberts) Benjamin.  He is survived by sons, Roderick (Judy), Scott, James and his first wife, Elizabeth (Jones);  grandchildren, Jacqueline, Michael and Susan and great-grandchildren:  Chase, Oliver and Nygel.  He is also survived by sisters-in-law, Audrey Hemmin, and Pauline Benjamin;  brother-in-law, Bob Benjamin; stepdaughter, Sharon (Hebert);  step grandsons, Tyler and Noah and special friend in Deland, Fla.,  Mary Lou Bauer and many nieces and nephews.  Special thanks to the staff  of The Cloisters Of Deland  and to Vitas Hospice Care for the care and attention they afforded Allen while he was there, and  particularly during his illness. A memorial service will be held in Windholm Christian Church, Windholm Avenue, Dartmouth, on Thursday, August 7 at 2 p.m. His ashes will be interred in the family plot in East Side Cemetery at Brookfield,  in a private ceremony at a later date. Memorial donations may be made to the [Wyndholme]  Christian Church or to the charity of your choice. 

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.