“Pregnant celebrities: all stars due in 2020”
CTV News has taken a step in the right direction, though, closing down their frivolous entertainment news dept. More networks should follow their example.
I do not have great hopes that the NHL playoffs will last long. Likewise, National League Baseball. All team sports, regardless of level.
Olivia de Havilland, 104.
Last of the Gone with the Winders.
(front cover photo by RD)
Upward and Onward, Vol. 2: Selected Later Poems, 2000-2020, will likely be my last collection of poetry for the foreseeable future. After that, I will likely be putting together a (first) collection of blog prose pieces (long overdue).
I am on the home stretch for the editorial/grunt work, but will leave publication till the fall (having been out of public for 5 months now). It is definitely, also, a pandemic-year book with a number of pieces about life in COVID wartime.
There are also a number of previous pieces that have been rewritten, poems that I’ve never published, as well as unpublished song lyrics, and several prose pieces about the craft of poetry.
Thus, Upward and Onward will be a unique, distinctly original collection like the previous ones. After its publication, I will publish any new poems on this blog, as they pop up, with more immediacy and momentousness.
(back cover photo by KD)
written around 5 a.m. one day last week.
‘Chorus’/’Refrain’:
Nothing can be the same again
There is no way of going back
To what and how we used to be
A dream we used to have.
Life’s all been changed
And the words have been lost.
We’ll have to make it up
As we go and ride the wave.
The stories lost
The legends of old
Our civilized ways
The familiar days.
A strange unfeeling
Setting in.
What can we do?
Where can we go?
All this pain
And all this confusion.
Our leaders have failed
And all is shut down.
And yet the robin sings
And the sun comes up
Scarcely caring for
Time or us.
The streets are empty
And the people home.
We remain islands
Like before.
‘Only connect!’
Said a wise old man.
The thing that makes us
Human after all.
That fills us
And completes us
Who and what we are
The marks we make.
After the war
Will come soft rains.
People will begin again
In a different time.
by critic Richard Schickel is simply the best, most penetrating analysis of The Woodman’s work (up to and including Hollywood Ending, 2002). The author first gives an analysis based on his 4 hrs. of interviewing the filmmaker in 2002. This is very good and summarizes Allen’s main themes, issues, and concerns. After that, the interview itself is given.
There was also a 1 1/2 hr. documentary directed by Schickel which was put out separately by the author. I.M.H.O., the book is much better and, if you read it in order, you get the essence of Allen’s movies and views. Since then and since leaving the States to live in France, Allen hasn’t had too much success other than his funny throwback comedy Midnight in Paris, populated with literary figures of 1920s Paris. It also features some of the magic realism he abandoned earlier on, which made those kinds of movies intriguing and special.
If you want to understand Woody Allen and his movies and views better, go directly to Schickel’s straight-ahead book.
Invictus
(by William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
an empty, useless power plant and doomed-to-fail-from-the-get-go valley gondola ride to pour millions more into, now that the city is going broke. Maybe the city worker crooks who bilked a cool 1.6 million from their employer can chip in some seed dough to help get things going.
Nice to see Telus, too, joining in the fun of ripping up the city along with the LRT ‘visionists’ on A Streetcar Named Big Folly.
Bring on the Accidental E-Coli Beach and the E-Coli Goose-Dump Lake in Hawrelak!
More empty humongous shoes by shopping centres and heaps of balls by freeways!
We’re talkin’ Gold, bonanza megabucks in them thar hills all along the valley!
the last great Civil Rights icon.
Sadly, the GOPs have ripped apart the Voters’ Right Act, thereby denying many black voters of their rights to vote in the Nov. 3 election, to dump Trump.
America has a long road back. T can still do a lot of damage before the end of the year, including pardoning his corrupt pals, buying their silences, and pardoning himself. He will not go quietly when he loses and has started up a fascistic secret police which I suspect he will order to protect him if he cries foul after the election results. It ain’t over till it’s over, and even if Biden wins, it will take many years for the country to recover.
I remain buoyed by Sarah Cooper’s and Randy Rainbow’s videos as well as by the ads of the Lincoln Project and the Republican Voters against Trump. It is refreshing to see all the humor and withering satire that has been generated, reducing T’s false images and claims to naked dust.
The sad thing about the hardcore 30-35% or so that still support T and believe in his 20,000 lies points to the dumb-ass survival of redneck ignorance, hatred, and violence in the States. America is at war with itself and T is the ‘hero’/false ‘god’ of once-hidden wells of evil, bigotry, and nastiness. It will be a long road to sanity, order, and respectability once again if Biden wins.
No. of hot dogs a human being can likely eat
74 is the current record.
be sure to visit Margaret Laurence’s house (the “big Simpson house in A Bird in the House) and the Stone Angel (from that novel) gravesite in the town cemetery. I’ve been there twice. Lots to see in the house. You can also drive by the small Connor house (ABITH). The main street also has references to details in A Jest of God. Laurence called her town Manawaka in her novels. Worth a drive off the Trans-Canada west of Winnipeg.
