To thine own self be true

The one that gets most of your donations to those in need: The Salvation Army, as usual. (They’ve been our preferred charity for decades.) Fact.
All others have too many expenses and expensive CEOs.

“So what do you miss about coming to our place?
(pause)
“COVID 19.”

(First trip)
At Hyla Brook (title of a Robert Frost poem) at Robert Frost Farm, Derry, New Hampshire.
A remarkable, memorable get-away while I was teaching at Scona. Age 42.

(Colleagues told me That’s the trip I want to make when I retire.)

During those, if there is no wind and only golden sun from the east, things are lit up and sometimes ‘goldenized’. Then, this old favorite by Wordsworth from gr. 12 (’67), comes to mind….

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show so fair:
Dull would be he of soul who could pass by
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare.
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Neil Meili. He’s a good guy and well-known south of the border on the cowboy poetry circuit. The following nostalgic poem, typical of Neil’s subject matter and style, is from his Fishing Old Wives Lake anthology.

Grandma Brander

When we moved to Mossbank I was twelve
Mother would sometimes stop us all from
playing, and send us over to visit her mother
in her little house on the south side of town

We never really knew what to say to her
or she to us, and I never really, until now
thought about whose shyness set that pace

She was a nice enough lady, and gave us cookies
and she had diabetes
and a leg that wasn’t there anymore

She may have had grand stories to tell
about her family and childhood in England
and Ontario, and her brother lost at sea
and tough times and good times in the West
and our grandfather whom we’d never met

What was he like? Were we like him?
Would we want to be?

These things would have been a leap
into total honesty
it was a leap we never took

We spent the afternoons in leaps
more comfortable to us all
small colored marbles
over small colored marbles
in the inscrutability of Chinese Checkers

“Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time”
-Paul Simon, from Rhythm of the Saints, 1990

(recalling Simon’s January 1991 concert at Edmonton Northlands to kick off his North American concert tour. Many drummers, Michael Brecker’s EWI sax, and nice clear sound)

As is often remarked, they don’t make ’em like they used to.

(Incidentally, I’m appreciating the increased time at home the past 7 months to catch up on my classic movie viewing.)

The Guns of Navarone from 1961 is an epic I missed the first time around. It has a tremendous following as the main actors attest to in the extras interviews. Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, and James Darren express surprise and delight that this is the film they are most often asked about 30-60 years later. And it is a special film with many admirable qualities and features.

This was a troubled English-American co-production on location in Rhodes in the Aegean except for London shooting with the director being replaced almost immediately by writer-producer Carl Foreman. J. Lee Thompson, a British director, was then brought on board, amazingly, shooting individual scenes after he read them, one at a time. (He would go on after this movie to direct Peck again in the powerful first version of Cape Fear in 1962.)

The production was filmed with the enthusiastic help of the Greek government, that gave the company permission to shoot at an unscaffolded Parthenon and supplied numerous extras as well as famed actress Irene Papas as one of two female characters adroitly added by Foreman to the script. A ballet company supplied extras for the wedding party scene and several Greek WW II destroyers were commandeered for the climax.

Foreman’s script derived from Alistair MacLean’s original novel which led to a string of movie successes for MacLean books in the ’60s. The writing is very strong fleshing out, with many moral and character conflicts, what was simply a modern adventure-action yarn about Allied commandos trying to take out a Nazi cannon fortress in WW II.

The stars were well-cast in this ensemble cast who had many of their scenes shot as group episodes so the viewer can see the reactions to various character choices and decisions.
Gregory Peck had previously played conflicted war heroes and his leader role was his best, culminating role of that series of war parts. He remains tough and unflinching even though he is challenged by the rest of the commandos.

Anthony Quinn steals the show. As the director points out, Quinn was so versatile, he played scenes hundreds of different of ways successfully. His role is as the likable right-hand man of Peck, who initially plans to kill Peck after the war for being responsible for the deaths of his family earlier in the war. He has the film’s most difficult acting scene, ‘losing it’ in the midst of Nazi captors.

David Niven had played many strong starring roles before (Stairway to Heaven, Separate Tables), but this is his best and most complex role as the explosives expert who remains loyal to his injured British leader-friend. He is the conscience of the fighters: a tricky part.
The supporting cast is equally strong and features British stalwarts: Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Robertson Justice, and Richard Harris, as well as young James Darren as the group’s designated psychotic killer.

The scenes are equally strong, memorable, and satisfying: as the mission gets going, the fight on open water when Nazis board the commandos’ boat, the stormy crash landing at Navarone (shot in a water tank in which the stars might have been seriously injured as one extra attests to), the difficult mountain climb, the various skirmishes with the Nazis on the way to the gun nest, their capture and escape, the final attack on the guns, and the closing escape scenes and finale.

Special effects, for the time, are still fairly convincing for the most part; the film was nominated for and won an AA for these. The look of the film in this newly restored version is fantastic: a colorful, nicely delineated widescreen; amazing given some of the original sources had ‘vinegar-ed’.

The music is outstanding: a score by the legendary Dimitri Tiomkin. (Fortunately for aficionados, the hour-long score is available today on CD.)

The movie is a veritable war classic and ushered in a subsequent series of commando-style movies through the sixties and seventies; it is the granddaddy of them all. The movie was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture and won for its Special Effects.

A serious viewer of this special DVD reissue is lucky to have an extra disc of special features including 3 longer documentaries and several featurettes. All aspects of the film are highlighted including the shooting, the director, the composer, and the restoration itself. This version of the movie with the extra disc is the one to view.

raises your blood pressure and can make a heart stop. (Little known health fact)

One of the most interesting books I own is this imaginative Christmas, 1968, Westvaco edition of Stephen Crane’s powerful novel about the American Civil War. The tactile design is by Bradbury Thompson.

left: the slipcase with steel engraved design; right: the black embossed hardcover “shot through” by a “bullet”

left: an endpaper; right: the title page–Thompson puts many different ‘bloodstains’ seemingly at random through the text

The “bulletholes” on each successive page become smaller and smaller as you read through the book with the last pages free of marks.

Crane’s classic is truly a poetic, psychological account of battle from the perspective of a raw recruit, Henry Fielding, who goes from novice to coward to hero. It is a riveting read with chaos and fear predominating, and is one of the best, most realistic books on war and war psychology. What is ironic about that is that Crane was not in this war, though he fought in battles elsewhere. Highly recommended.