To thine own self be true

You never know what dangerous imported spider along for the ride might pop out as many shoppers have found out inadvertently.

One can be attacked in broad daylight at 3:30 pm as in the case of a kind black man, 65, who is known to my better half. This poor man was viciously kicked and assaulted in an unprovoked attack in a case of “the wrong time, wrong place” on his daily walk in Mill Woods.

In any case, no ordinary citizen, especially a friendly senior, needs this kind of nasty brazen assault while minding their own business, trying to get some air or exercise. Edmontonians should not kid themselves about the safety of our neighborhoods anymore these daze. Too many thugs, ‘animals’, and creeps on the streets at all hours of the day. Solitary walking continues to be a risky activity even in quiet neighborhoods.

Let’s hope the violent offender gets arrested and receives appropriate justice, not the usual namby-pamby stuff that goes on too often in Canadian courts (in contrast to American courts). * follow-up: A young black man has been arrested.

Today is a real humdoozer (again).
Don’t linger outside. Mind those pets.
Gasline antifreeze is mandatory.

A seminal British ‘kitchen sink’ drama which was the late Albert Finney’s first starring role. He plays Arthur Seaton, a rebellious factory worker who gets his married lover (played nuancedly and poignantly by Rachel Roberts) pregnant and then tries to help her deal with the crisis because of his feelings for her. He, meanwhile, becomes involved with a younger woman (played innocently by Shirley Anne Field) who brings him to the ‘precipice’ of marriage.

The realistic screenplay was adapted by the author Alan Sillitoe (of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner). He includes some very powerful scenes such as at the fair when Arthur and his pregnant lover are caught and punished by her husband and army mates, and even some gratuitous juvenile scenes such as when Arthur plugs a plump neighborhood ‘nosey parker’ in the butt with an air gun. There is that level of balance and contrast within the grubbiness and poverty of the characters’ lives depicted.

Sillitoe uses Arthur voiceover at the beginning, in the middle, and ending effectively, taking the viewer more inside Seaton’s head and reasoning. The director keeps the focus squarely on Arthur, though the minor characters are concisely delineated in the ways they contrast to him, notably the pregnant woman’s husband and Seaton’s fishing pal.

The accents at the beginning may throw off some North American viewers and there isn’t much to like or admire about most of the characters of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, but it remains an honest motion picture that starkly (mostly through Freddie Francis’s black and white cinematography and John Dankworth’s folk and light jazz music)) captures and evokes the limited opportunities and small, pathetic lives of these frustrated characters existing in small-town Britain of the 1950s. And, if you’re a Finney fan, this role is a must-see in that veteran actor’s long, varied, and impressive career.

(widescreen/letterboxed dog)

but I could not be happy without eyesight. Post-op, all is widescreen, brighter, in more vivid colors, demanding attention to details. There is more visual beauty in/to the world than I have seen in a long time. People, in particular, their faces, eyes, and expressions no longer separated by glass or plastic. Aware, too, more of the immediate physical world around me.

There are other unexpected changes and ‘enhancements’, too. Words come more naturally and I am using more words and phrases than usual from my deep, large word-bank built up over the decades.  New expressions, more thoughts, more motivations. Experiencing new possibilities or re-experiencing old impressions with a surprising bonus freedom and ease in what is turning out to be a new, revised me.

in a terrible state of chassis.”
–Joxer Daly, philosophical drunk in Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock

The beautiful national butterfly sanctuary down by the Mexican/U.S. border waiting for the imminent, mindless, soul-less Trump excavators to roll in and destroy their habitat for a lie and a fictional national emergency which doesn’t exist. Right out of Steinbeck’s evil machine-men destroying the Okies’ home and land in The Grapes of Wrath. “The more things change…” and still the environment (and, in this case, its creatures) being endangered by one ignorant, egotistical, loutish, crooked fool, no one else. So much the paradisiacal land of the original American Dream.

Happy Days. No generation gap here with my (only-child) Winnipeg parents.
After first three-book ‘overnight success’ that changed my life forever. Taken after a triumphant return from a Halifax teacher conference in the early ’90s.
Remembering them 30 years later, too, at a mutual peak moment…

(at their peak, Edmonton’s most famous poetic trio with ‘Margaret Moodie’–Lynn Joberg)

What a night! Surrounded by many of my poet-friends, launching the new book and performing “Until Next Year”–a combination of a cassette 1983 demo with Wayne Fraser and Murray Smith and me reading live over that background. Knocked the socks off everyone who’d never heard the like before. ‘Twas great fun!

Next Monday I will be back with a similar music-live voice-over performance as in the ’90s days of olde with Dino and Glen at Café Le Gare. A revival of the Spiritus glory readings. Last evening even Pierrette was saying how funny the Margaret Moody readings were (take-offs on Atwood’s poetry). Yes, those days when anything was possible for the Spiritus performing trio.

(This is the preferred version to see or buy)

This adaptation of E.M. Forster’s pre-WW1 novel by the Merchant-Ivory-Prawer-Jhabvala team still stands up after all these years. This was my AA evening viewing this year; A Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Sleuth (1972) were the runners-up choices.

Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter’s best/fullest role-performance) is a young English woman who lies to everyone and herself about her love for passionate George Emerson (Julian Sands) whom she meets while in Italy on her tour with an uptight, priggish and prudish chaperone (expertly played by Maggie Smith). The main conflict is between the superficial, phony English prudes exemplified by the chaperone, a pompous English cleric-tour guide, and an English fop Cecil (played by Daniel Day-Lewis in a scene-stealing role the audience laughs at and later sympathizes with) and, in contrast, George, his wise, blunt, effusive father (played engagingly by Denholm Elliott whose character represents Forster’s feelings and message), the novelist (Judy Dench), and the lively English chaplain (humorously acted by Simon Callow).

What a beautiful-looking film with Italian locales and English country houses and villages! The movie, incidentally, won AAs, deservedly for Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, and Costume Design. The music by Richard Robbins is totally and accurately atmospheric. And there are many memorable scenes including those between Lucy and her immature brother (humorously played by Rupert Graves), the male nude swimming-hole scene, the Italian street-murder scene (reminiscent of Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet), all of Mr. Emerson’s scenes, and many more.

This is, overall, a warm, rich deceptively simple film that flows extremely smoothly like a good glass of wine (even with its conflicts and misunderstandings) to its predictable wish-fulfillment resolution. Unlike most movies these daze, this one hearkens back to a golden age of tasteful (British) film-making and is one of the top comedy of manners on film of all time.