To thine own self be true

Calculator man

With rock book

Rock book opened to inside

“You see you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself.”
–“Garden Party”

For myself, as long ago as 1990, when I’d hit a wall from sacrificing and putting myself out there too much for the pleasure and approval of others. Rick was right, you can’t please everyone (you’re more likely to get trolled nowadays for the most innocent, self-effacing behaviors!); you ultimately have to answer to yourself for your own life, no one else. In that, the beginning of a major self-adjustment and self-actualization, consequently.

About 1961 in grade 6, my friend Bob Hutchinson and I decided to take a chance and go trick-or-treating, although most of our classmates had stopped the practice, being ‘too old’. I went to one house on a ‘higher-up’ street where we believed the treats might be better or more generous. I was unexpectedly waylaid by a man in his 30s who insisted I perform a trick–the first time I’d ever been asked for one. He waited until I came up with a recitation of the first poem I ever memorized in school in grade 5. Stumblingly–I’d learned it the year before, but hadn’t said it since then–I surprisingly began to recite “Some One” by Walter de la Mare.

Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking;
I’m sure-sure-sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right, But nought there was a stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl’s call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.

Well, that confirmed that Halloweening was going to be a tough gig from that point on; it was my last outing. But I learned something that night about the importance and value of poetry. It could be a performance for an audience as small as one. Poetic words, like magic on the tongue, could move Uncle Henry-types (the hard adult man from Morley Callaghan’s “Luke Baldwin’s Vow”). There was also a mystery about poetry (as in this poem’s subject matter) much like so much of life-experience and Halloween, too. And there was a music in the rhymes and rhythms that could potentially charm and move others as well as myself. This poem–these particular words–were also the most powerful words I had ever uttered to another human being up to that point in time. Little did I know then, that this was the start of the poet that one day I would become. That mere lad, nervously reciting from memory on the cold fall front-steps, all for a transitory treat.

(The Great Pumpkin revisited)

(decorated crème de menthe pie; the 1 1/2 oz. version)

100% in 1905
50% in 1976
30% in 2015
10% in 2021.
The point of diploma exams today?

Exams were worth 100% in MB in 1967 when I graduated and the same here in my first 4 years of teaching. Grossly unfair, limited, and limiting. 0% allotted for course work and teacher marking.

1. The Ultimate Scary Kids Movie: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (on The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad)

2. Ultimate Ghost Stories: The Innocents (1961)–Truman Capote-adapted version of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting (1964)–based on Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House (which I once taught)

3. Best Roger Corman Adaptations of Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death (both Vincent Price tours de forces)

4. Best horror Hitchcocks (for those who have not seen them) Psycho, The Birds

5. Best Vampire Flick: Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula

6. Best Canadian Horror Movie: The Changeling (George C. Scott)

7. Best Kid/Devil Pic: The Omen (Gregory Peck)

8. Best Nicholas Roeg Atmospheric ESP Pic: Don’t Look Now (Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie)

9. Best Stalker/ESP Pic: The Eyes of Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway & Tommy Lee Jones)

10. Best Early Movies` Special Effects: The Invisible Man (Claude Rains)

11. Best Helpless Terrorized Blind Girl Pic: See No Evil (Mia Farrow)

12. Best Mutant Invasion Flick: Them! (James Whitmore)

13. Best Modern Witches` Tale: Rosemary`s Baby

14. Best Humorous Farce: Arsenic and Old Lace

–Walt Whitman

See examples thereof by searching the following titles on this website:

The Main Historical Events of My Life

70 Years: A Self-Portrait

My Special Friends: A Short Select History Thereof

Rick Davies, Winnipeg, SHCI: After 1967 AD

To My 1964-67 Silver Heights Collegiate Fellow-Students

The Five Other Happy Fortuitous Aggregations in My Life

The Legend of Spiritus

Richard Davies/Poems

My Creative Writing Career

5 Decades of RD Writing

Richard Davies: List of My Books

Richard Davies, Edmonton, Textbook Author

Another Lifetime Ago: A Textbook Author

My Other Education Publications

Richard Davies, Edmonton Teacher

30 Years–Another Life Teaching

Remembering Teaching and More

Some Inspirational, Influential Books from My Past

A Course of Great Must-Read English Poetry

Teaching ELA: My Final Overview/Take

Schoolin’ 47 1/2 years was enough

1972-73 My First Teaching Year

Grand Centre ’72-75

6 Decades of Live Musical Performances

Band Memories

Still Musically Active at 71 1/2

Live Concerts I’ve Attended

Some of My Signed Musical Memorabilia

Some Other Favorite Singers, Musicians, and Songwriters

The Movie Reviews of Richard Davies

Revisiting Movies: A Top Film List

Can Lit Blog

Nice CanLit Dust Jacket Design: Part 1 and Part 2

Revisiting “Classics Illustrated”

Our Lives Are Made up of Many Processes

Quotes by RD

Albertan’s chose to stay with the current system by less than 1%. Calgary and Edmonton area carried the day.
Fewer problems for the sports teams and many others this way.
Personally, I don’t like the amount of winter darkness we currently wake up with. Imagine going to work or school in the dark for many more days. Crazy choice poised by you-guessed-it, ta-da, Kenney & UCP. Lacking in common sense and by guys who don’t wake up early like the majority of Albertans.

*Kenney will be really pissed off and call foul as will the farmers/rural Alberta– being defeated by both main cities. He didn’t deliver what his base wanted. Another major Kenney/UCP failure.

you would not have seen 10 years ago:

What’s on Queen Elizabeth’s mind?

Matsuyama won the Zozo tourney today after winning the Master’s earlier this year.

But I was struck by the contrast between the Asian fans and the U.S. fans.
Asian: quiet, reverent; all masked.
U.S.: noisy, rude, with idiots shouting out: all unmasked.
Speaks volumes of 2 world cultures.