To thine own self be true

The late great, unforgettable Johnny Clegg who passed yesterday at age 66 after a 4-year-battle against pancreatic cancer.

I discovered his music back in 1990 when a gr. 12 Academic Challenge Strathcona student used one of his songs for an assignment and included his fantastic Cool, Crazy, Beautiful World CD. My daughter and I subsequently saw him in Banff and became confirmed fans forever. He was very powerful in performance with his wild, whirling Zulu dancing.

We saw him again a couple more time; once in 2011 at the Winspear, where this signed photo originates from. Clegg was a South African musical legend and the highlight of his life was when Nelson Mandela joined him on stage during a memorable performance of “Asimbonaga”, Clegg’s song dedicated to Mandela.

male and female, who drop their phones in the toilet. Now what kind of desperate dope needs to be on the phone, complete with sound effects, to be in contact with someone/anyone while relieving themselves?

(one of many ‘proofs’ of the basic value and significance of Art)

Art, of course. It has to do with Truth, Beauty, and Consciousness. Art, because it essentially has to do with something we’re all born with–the human senses and feelings. Art also has more to do with Significant Inner Matters, namely Imagination, Soul, and Spirit.

(‘Waking up’ with Bob and The Beatles in the sixties was something else)

The one I grew up in from 1949 to 1970 thereabouts. It was a very exciting time following the bleak Depression and WW II. The ’50s were somewhat drab, but they were a safe and fun time to be a kid. The sixties was a wonderful time to develop and open up one’s consciousness. Rock and Roll, The Beatles, books, increased energy and mobility, and a profound increase of freedom and possibilities following the more static, stable ’50s. No question the sixties represented the early peak in Western civilization, too. No, I could not have been luckier in terms of the time born.

Certainly much of early life is about gaining knowledge, but since retiring from teaching at age 52 in 2002, I have worked more on fine-tuning and coming to know who I am. So the process has become more of finding out and clarifying, refining what my beliefs are.

(A man with much certainty, purpose, and inner peace)

The blog name says it all; “To thine own self be true.” Hamlet’s credo has long been my own.

A bus driver. I was always impressed by these guys because if my car-less family went anywhere, it was by bus. I was always interested enough in grades 1-5 to sit upfront where I could see the drivers and their routines. In my only-child fantasy life, I would pretend to be a bus driver and ride my mother’s bike, making stops, pretending to have a route of my own. (As a paperboy, incidentally, I eventually fulfilled one of the bus driver dreams, acquiring a belt-attached coin changer for collecting on my route.)

One of the most interesting bike trips I ever made was with my mother from St. James, Wpg. to East Selkirk, MB one weekend in grade 7 after I finally got my own bike (a three-speed gift out of the blue from my grandmother as a graduation/start of summer present). I mapped out our route via a city map, taking main streets across town to the north end before connecting with Main Street and the highway north to Selkirk. (We did not travel on Portage Ave.)

We left around 5 and got to Selkirk around 9 before crossing the Red River bridge in the dark to the dusty stone road to East Selkirk several miles away. Dangerous to say the least, being passed by cars kicking up stones in the darkness, but the journey kept us going. (My fit mother was in her thirties and had probably worked that day earlier. I had energy, but she was given quite the workout on her old bike which clicked as it was pedalled.) We made it by 10 and phoned home to my Dad who was shocked that we had made it, We stayed at my mother’s sister’s place Saturday, then started back early on Sunday, getting home around supper time.

My mother at seventy, after my father’s death, could be equally audacious, riding by herself on #1 out to Portage la Prairie, 55 miles out of Wpg. one day on a bicycle, cars whizzing by her. A whim of some kind resembling my earlier childhood whim to go see my cousins in East Selkirk, to see if such a thing could be accomplished on bike despite the many miles. Her feat, though, was accomplished in one day so hers was the far more nuttily remarkable.

These days, at almost 70, I confine my rides to the neighborhood and know my limits unlike my mother who often put herself in risky situations throughout her life. Of that, more in another blog entry down the road.

Going back to Winnipeg last summer, I shook my head to recall such unique boldness and determination in making such unsafe, unconventional, daredevil trips.

The Summer of Our Discontent.

If you want better, sunny weather, you’ll have to leave the province. Tourists won’t find much open except the zoo. The museum is inaccessible parking-wise. And the Third World Roads remain schmucked or closed. Thanks, Don and city council.

Must have been fun with 350 poor souls exiting the boat for several hours in the dark amidst clouds of mosquitos and all as the romantic voyage came to a fated halt on E-Coli Beach.

get invited back to the exact same spot 50 years later (as pictured in Winnipeg’s Bannatyne School gym, below, 50 years before, on the occasion of their school’s 100th anniversary as the main centenary speaker. This event is typical of the many lucky breaks I’ve experienced in my personal life.

In the top picture, I was chosen in grade 8 to receive the school painting when the school extension with gym first opened. (My 2012 speech, incidentally, was about what school life and the neighborhood was like in the ’50s.) The lower picture is that of the original school pulled down around 1968 while I was in university.)