To thine own self be true

for audiences over the years was seeing how they would react, how music affected them, and what they did in response to it. When Ken and I performed as Fudge for students and staff functions, the effects were immediate. Listeners were surprised how easy it was to break free of rules and limitations of school, to transcend ordinary contexts on the wings of music. They were surprised what was possible from two teachers singing and playing, and how they would instantly get drawn in, and involved with the songs, even ones they didn’t know particularly well.

For me, that was what playing music for 50 years to audiences was all about. The sharing, the communication, the happenings that would spring up without much ado. The power of music in lifting people out of their routines, often self-imposed chains, and limited expectations.

via Western movies, tv Westerns, and comic books.

Both pistols blazin’ (in the imagination): a typical grade 2 Canadian kid in 1957.

The pictures do not lie.

(my ‘hippie’ u years)

Age 21, I had finished a BA, English at U of A, in the spring of ’71, with 1 year of PD/AD (Professional Diploma/After Degree in Education) to go so I could teach.

I applied at the post office for summer work and, long-haired, was interviewed. The boss said if I wanted the job I’d have to get a haircut, which I did, needing the money for tuition in my fourth year.

I reported to work, got fingerprinted ( theft of mail concern), and was sent out to the Northgate depot, then on 97th Street south of what is now Northtown Mall.

My routes included in Londonderry (just being built then) and 118 th Avenue area east of 97th Street (then still a respectable area. On the latter route I took note of a nice b & w portrait of a young Leonard Cohen, who had passed through Edmonton in the late ’60s, later returning to buy it for a costly $25. (I later bestowed it to my English Dept. at McNally in 1983 when I left there.)

I spent a lot of time on buses (letter carriers used to ride for free on ETS). I would catch the first 6 am bus at 38th Ave. & 111 St. open-air ‘terminal’ (after a ride from 35A Ave. where I lived), transfer to a trolley at Lendrum which took me downtown where I’d catch another trolley to the circle at 118 Ave. and 101 St., where I’d catch a bus going north past the postal depot. In the mornings, this process took 1 hr. Coming home 1 1/2 hrs. or more.
And I took buses to and from the route, coming back to the station at noonhr. but able to leave the end of the route after work to go straight home. The carriers punched a time clock in the morning and at noon. There were unscrupulous carriers who clocked at noon, going home early, having actually finished their routes in the morning.

There were other ‘short cuts’ to be exploited by permanent carriers and drivers, some who wore shorts in the summer while most wear the de rigueur black wool pants and warm long-sleeve shirts. (I figured the pants were wool for warmth in winter.)

When we started work, we’d go to slotted cabinets for our walks, open bags of mail left there, then put the mail in the right slots. After that, the mail was rubber-banded in an order not terribly well-marked on the cabinet. There were mornings I remember my holding up a driver because I hadn’t finished the banding. Once or twice, when I couldn’t make sense of the order, the right-hand underling of the boss there had to come in and finish the work hastily for the driver. I still recall the other older regular carriers yapping away at each other in the din. Some were funny; one guy from the ‘old country’ used to sing often, mockingly, to his friend Har-ry in a pronounced German accent, “Have you ever been lonely? Have you ever been blue?”

We picked up our mail after getting toff the bus and walking to those tall dark green mailboxes that used to be at corners, and then transferring the mail to our bags. There were always unexpected glitches on the walks: sudden rain storms–no jacket, talkative homeowners, dogs barking (We had a product called “Off” to wear on our belts to ward off loose biting dogs. There were carriers who had been bitten, who needed time off.) Back then, too, many walkup apts. had slots inside the front door that anyone else might have stolen from.

And as you got close to the houses, there’d be interesting placements for the mailboxes and unexpected signs like the one that read “Do not touch the flowers. The neighbors are watching you and will report you to the police.”

There was also a distinct lack of trust sometimes of “casuals” as the summer help was called and I can remember delivering by Meadowlark and starting to take more time since I was paid by the clock. (This never amounted to much more, maybe up to an extra hour. I didn’t see a great need to rush like most of the permanent guys, some of whom cheating on the time clock claiming 3 more hrs. than reflected by reality.)

So the flunky, mentioned above, and my big boss from downtown actually came out by car to the end of my route to see what time I was finishing up. They were definitely surprised to see me doing a relatively honest day’s work, told me to speed it up and I never had a problem again. And so it went for 4 months of the most exercise and walking I have probably ever had in my life. I was a skinny guy as you can see from the above photo: 140lbs. something like that.

After u ended the following year, Karen and I were married at age 21 on May 3 (our 50th anniversary this spring). We went on our honeymoon the day after arriving in Jasper that afternoon, checking in at the hotel to find that her mother had telephoned with a message regarding the post office calling and offering me a job again. I was told to report in 2 days with a haircut (so much for the fashionable shoulder-length hair in the wedding photo below), so so much for the honeymoon–1 day in Jasper! (We did a make-up week in Banff in the following spring, but it poured for a week! We didn’t have any luck on honeymoons.)

I guess I must have passed muster overall though, given the report the big boss gave me below:

Overall, the money was good; paid for my final year tuition. I got a nice tan, lots of exercise, spent a lot of time on my own, rode buses a fair bit, and showed I could handle reasonable challenge on a daily job.

of the future.

T.S. Eliot, author of the great 20th century poem–The Waste Land, when asked about the future of our Civilization, said “Internecine fighting, people killing one another in the streets.” Civilization to him appeared a crumbling edifice destined to perish in the flames of war.

If you follow the news these days, I suspect you’d likely agree with Eliot’s view. People killing others and sometimes themselves in the streets. There is much to do with hate in this rather fragile time in Western civilization.

I also don’t think Eliot would disagree with Walt Kelly’s/Pogo’s summation: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

(1967: hamming it up as a ‘Marlon Brandoish’ Usher with large red handkerchief in grade 12 production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury)

And so you who knew him long ago in the past, you who remember him as wild, free-souled, and somewhat careless in matters of the heart. Would you have guessed he would leave the 1960s glory that was Winnipeg? Would you believe that he had studied and actually worked hard in university to become a 30-year-high-school-English teacher?

Perhaps that he would go on to musically entertain thousands on many stages? That he would write hundreds of poems and songs and lead several bands of musical friends playing the pop catalogue of the 1950s to 90s? That he would marry and have two fine kids and would be married for 50 years to the same special woman from 1967? Would that have been remotely predictable then, in our shared youth of the 1950s and ’60s?

Did you know that he had worked as a nursing orderly in a hospital, as a letter-carrier for Canada Post, and as a film classifier for Alberta? And what about his other lives as a happy grandfather, as a literary historian for his country’s literature, or his career as a textbook author, writing and editing books that our children used in high school, regardless of where you now live and have lived in Canada? Did you have a clue that he would go on to write for and educate millions of young teenagers across the land? Did you know that he would become a successful writer with over 60 educational book publications? That he would still be standing up in front of audiences at age 71 to read from his work? (71 years seemed so far away once upon our time.)

Could you have foreseen that he would speak to thousands of teachers, too, over a 30-year-period, about how to teach different aspects of high school English or that he would reinvent himself in the digital age to write thousands of blog entries about personal consciousness, his life, and his love and knowledge of Canadian literature?

Yes, that same strange, wild boy, Room 42`s “most promising playboy”, that poor, overly-confident, but blissfully ignorant boy and teen. That naive kid who lived the crazy possibilities of all he dreamt of along the pike. That “neat guy”, that obvious nonconformist, that blatant show-off. That uninhibited youth who lived on nothing but hopes and dreams still lives on today, still remembers, still connects, but now accepts, understands, and appreciates how dumb-lucky he was that so much went well, how he had had more than his share of lucky breaks and fortunate flukes, and how he went as far as he could go.

Well, did you? You didn’t? Well, he didn’t either.

Today he looks back and wonders about your own many changes and fate. And whether you acquired a comparable knowledge, awareness, fulfillment, self-actualization, success and relative happiness after all this time and space between us. And what stories would you tell. Would you as surprised as he is, looking back at what he once was, what you were, and what we all were so long ago way back then?

(2019: 52 years later, a reflective moment in Jasper, AB: “Still Crazy After All These Years”)

(Let the Sunshine In)”, 1969, by The Fifth Dimension on the radio today, I thought about how much the times have changed and declined from The Summer of Love (1967) to The Age of Hate, Fear, Ignorance, and Loathing (2021).
Most days the current news just makes me shake my head at the cruelty, nastiness, and stupidity of our fellow creatures. So much energy wasted and so little kindness, decency, and love.

up in smoke thanks to another failed Kenney bad choice in court.

His ‘War Room’, its main accomplishment–outing a Bigfoot cartoon–costs taxpayers 82 thou a day! The media should be all over what that total agenda-ed waste costs a month and a year.

Meantime the UCP chooses not to pay a $25/day day care subsidy. It’s all about failed, stupid Kenney initiatives paid off the backs of average Albertans.

“I stand here dazzled with my heart in flames at this world of wonders, world of wonders, world of wonders, world of wonders…“

(Bruce Cockburn–Canada’s top male political folk-singer and songwriter, and top folk-guitarist)

What the average Canadian family pays from their income for federal, provincial, and municipal taxes per year. Apparently some middle and upper families pay over 50%. Now that’s servitude, baby. (info: Fraser Institute, 2013)

“We can discover meaning in life in three different ways: 1) by doing a deed; 2) by experiencing a value; and 3) by suffering….The second way is by experiencing something, such as a work of nature or culture; and also by experiencing someone, i.e., by love.”

“Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”