To thine own self be true

(his amazingly full, rich life autobio; also recommended: the signed CD boxset)

(he signed by “Lions” in the 2nd ed. of my copy of  Inside Poetry)

What a show at the Winspear! I think it was the best tour show I’d ever see him do with his best backup players. Told him he should put it on DVD. It would be a great one for his fans and those who encountering him for the first time. Walking a little limply and bent over more than the last time I saw him four years ago. But his voice and guitar chops were in fine form; haven’t changed in decades.
Did see him in the autograph line afterward and he signed one of his song lyrics in one of my textbooks (I’ve had published “If A Tree”, “Going to the Country”, “Silver Wheels”, and “Lions” twice.)
I still remember him crawling on the floor behind a piano to tune it in a church here on campus in 1970ish when he was thru Edmonton the first time. (He played piano on the first two albums. “Musical Friends”!) He looked surprised by the memory, but admitted “it was possible” in the mists of his own memory.
An amazing show. Row 1, dead centre seats with my son. It really does not get much better than that.

(my theatre program with her rare signature, from the successful 1959 Philadelphia run which culminated on Broadway and various awards)

Lorraine Hansberry is pretty much a forgotten name now partly because she was a one-hit wonder. But what a sensation it was when it came out–A Raisin in the Sun–the first significant black play by an American black author. I first studied the play in my AmLit course at U of A in 1970-71, and later, saw the film version with the dynamic young Sidney Poitier in the lead male role.

I always wondered if Hansberry had written anything else. Turns out she had–various kinds of forgotten journalism and one more play with black and white characters which flopped after Raisin. It was written after she divorced her husband, became a lesbian, and then contracted cancer and died in her 30s.

American Masters has generously devoted two hours to her life and career, and probably a half-hour could have been cut for a number of reasons to make this doc more powerful. In any case, this film will be especially appreciated by her fans and black audiences everywhere, and explain what happened to her after Raisin as well as revealing her involvement in civil rights. Amazingly, there is rare private footage of Hansberry and her private diaries also reveal more about her personality and her inner self.

Hansberry’s major work remains an effective snapshot into the lives of black Americans about the time of the Civil Rights Movement and the discrimination they faced. Many people today have not experienced what the Youngers do and, although the play is not often performed in Canada, it still remains the ultimate black commentary on the American dream and a major step forward in asserting dignity in black lives. I highly recommend it, probably more than any other American black literary work for its hard truths and realistic characterizations.

“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.”

Someone here I know leaving for China this morning, which is exactly when I get an interesting media e-mail from my grade 5 teacher back in Winnipeg, who, for the first time out of the blue, sends me something about China. What are the odds?
Happens so many times. Another example: my wife getting a bizarre phone call message from some unknown old woman telling her “not to worry” at the exact same time her mother was dying in hospital.
I could easily write a book about these strange synchronicities; there have been so many of them, including significant ones like the latter.

(from a series of movie reviews from my 2004-2005 film classification days)

FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL (1997)

Stars: Dave Hoover, George Mendonca, Ray Mendez, Rodney Brooks
Directed by Errol Morris

“I wanted to be a Clyde Beatty.”

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is a bizarre, complex, fascinating, and mind-expanding documentary based on a series of interviews with four men with very unique professions: a wild animal trainer, a topiary gardener, a mole-rat specialist, and a robot-scientist. Their talk is overlapped and juxtaposed with images from their work along with old B-movies and circus footage. Ideas and metaphors bounce around throughout the picture, and the filmmaker has edited his material in such a way that the viewer is shown unusual, unexpected parallels between the four superficially different subjects.

One motif is obviously animals, whether these be the topiary animals created by gardener George Mendonca, the circus-act lions trained by Dave Hoover, the mole-rats studied by Ray Mendez, or the pet-like robots of Rodney Brooks. Morris suggests that human beings have an inexplicable passion to understand and manipulate nature, and, in particular, have a strong desire to shape and modify nature and its behaviors.

Each man is experimenting with structures and routines associated with his passion. The lion tamer talks of the variable factors, such as power outages, which affect his lions’ attitudes toward him. The mole-rat expert experiments with display-house structures to learn more about mole-rats’ “purpose.” The gardener obsessively prunes his garden animals. while the scientist sets new, more complicated tasks for his robots to accomplish.

A related motif is that of the circus performer–a pattern made obvious by inclusion of the lion tamer. But all of the other men are performers in their own right. The mole-rat expert sets up displays to entertain the public in museums. The topiary gardener originally created his green animals for his eccentric female boss’s pleasure and these remain available for public viewing today. The robot-scientist entertains, as do the other three men, the movie’s viewers with demonstrations of what his robots can do.

Each man has a specialized knowledge that, ironically, seems to suggest that they will become ‘extinct’ and irreplaceable. The aging lion tamer has a young apprentice, but he worries if she will learn enough to prevent a fatal error. The gardener’s work has taken fifteen years of slavishly dedicated work, requiring a patience not found in the new generation. The mole-rat expert also appears to have no one to pass his knowledge on to. And the scientist may himself become extinct as the silicon-based life (his robots) threatens to supplant carbon-based life (him). They are all like Clyde Beatty, the animal-trainer and B-movie star who is referred to throughout the film. Like him, they are so specialized that they are on their ways to becoming unique legends of the past.

As interesting as the juxtapositions and parallels created by Morris’s editing are the questions he raises:
•To what extent are people like nature, animals or robots? Do nature, animals, and robots have consciousness?
•What do ruling passions and obsessions have in common?
•Are individuals really needed for any group’s survival?
•What is the role of the specialist in our culture?
•Given the facts of change, nature, evolution, death, and other limits, will
all human beings eventually be ‘phased out’?

Like the robot invasion of the solar system fancifully imagined at one point, chaos ‘the enemy’ threatens the stability of these men’s lives and our own lives. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is certainly a movie that inspires awe and wonder about the human race, its fate, and our various compulsive enthusiasms.

“O for a life of sensations!”–John Keats

E-communication (whether by phone or computer) can certainly be very powerful, intimate, and connective, though like most things, it has its limits and limitations. I will say that–as evidenced in/by this blog–words, feelings, and ideas can all be communicated and shared easily and effectively, and that–given the potential perpetuity of a long-term maintained blog–there is definitely a certain permanence and illusion of immortality to the e-media process. And there are benefits to the instantaneous 24/7 convenience of e-mail.

But, my personal preference for communication, expression, performance, and creativity remains live in-person presence–a far more ‘electric’/dynamic mode for exchanging and sharing information (broadly speaking). If you want to really get close to someone (and vice-versa) and get to know them fully and intimately, that is still the most fun, real, meaningful, and significant way to truly and beautifully connect. That is where souls and spirits meet, commune, and connect more deeply.

There is also a palpable physicality and innerly-experienced emotionality that can never be duplicated by and will never be replaced by e-media. What matters, still, most in the lives and experiences of human beings is live in-person presence as experienced by the inner self or soul. It is there you will find a reality, truth, richness, depth, completeness, and beauty that blogs, e-mails, and phone calls never do full justice to.

………………………………..

one more perspective:

“Touch is the meaning of being human.”-Andrea Dworkin

(note: touch-screens are a poor substitute for the real thing. Besides which, technology or robots will never really love you.)

by Mr. Hypocrite Justin.

The Canada Summer Jobs program attestation.
‘Thou shalt agree with the Liberal Left agenda or receive no funding’.

There is no logical connection between grants for summer jobs and taking some absurd, irrelevant oath on women’s and women’s reproductive rights. This arbitrary totalitarian demand flies in the face of freedoms of expression and religions.

I also find it dictatorial that Liberal MPs have to take a pro-Choice oath if they wish to remain federal Liberals. ‘Thou shalt line up on my agenda or else.’

The whole notion of ‘Follow my discriminatory agenda or you’re screwed’ hardly seems benevolent, broad-minded or one supporting do-good religious groups whom our society needs now more than ever. So much for the party window-dressing of fairness, tolerance, and true diversity.

And only an idiot, who ironically professes to be a good Catholic, would unilaterally write off any Christian groups while posing for phony, self-aggrandizing photos with every other ethnic group or race under the sun for a pseudo, limited/limiting notion of diversity.

If Little t gets away with this, it’ll be a Trumpian travesty north of the border.

A steamy summer evening in Winnipeg, 10:30 pm-ish. I was waiting at the transfer point going north by Harman’s Drugs (my high-school-friend’s father’s store), for the little connecting bus that passed the General Hospital, where I worked as an orderly that year, part-time, before my first year of Arts at the first year of the University of Winnipeg.

Joe hailed me from where he was standing–a lithe, diminutive man with coiffed reddish hair in his late 20s wearing a tight, dapper male nurse’s uniform, that looked somewhat futuristic like a Star Trek outfit. He worked in Emergency; Casualty they called it then. My father told me he dispensed the drugs there and was also the ‘life of any parties. I had never met anyone like Joe before. His voice was smooth and gentle for a man back then.

He knew I was “Del’s kid” and he started talking to me like he had known me all his life. We chatted easily and at some point when he learned I was a singer-musician, he mentioned an LP he was carrying. “Do you like the blues? Have you ever heard Billie Holiday?”

I said I hadn’t and he promptly gave me the record to borrow for a listen. Lady Day he called her, a name I only heard again decades later when jazz-player friends referred to her. At the time, I politely listened, but found nothing that spoke to my Stan Getz and Beatles sensibility. Holiday’s voice sounded ‘small’ and full of woe to me, like that of a prematurely ‘old’ black child.

Anyway, I saw Joe a day or so  later to give him back the record. He was clearly disappointed when I told him Holiday and her music were “ok”. From that point on, we never talked again whenever I saw him catching the same bus. (I always wondered what would have happened had I been more enthusiastic in my response.)

It was several years later that my Dad told me Joe had come into Casualty as an overdosed “queer”, looking beaten up by his partner. His smile and easy manner were not apparent to any of his former co-workers that sad, troubling evening. Instead, he was bruised and sobbing.

Joe died young and I once looked up his obituary years later and wondered at the kind of life he had had. He had once been so popular and friendly, but finished badly apparently. And I have never heard Billie Holiday sing since then without remembering him and how he had tried to connect to me one summer evening through one of his favorite singers via his simple, freely-offered gift of music.

Part of the Poirot DVD boxset. In many ways, this will seem ordinary except for the camera work and effective music when compared with Sidney Lumet’s movie version with an all-star cast. Where it differs is its handling of the denouement which turns out to be the climax Also as Poirot makes a choice to be presented to the police of the rescue party.

Throughout the series, Poirot has been portrayed as a staunch Catholic believer who has difficult choices to make, often in regard to how he will choose to deal with various guilty parties. This tv drama is no different and probably the most anguished choice he has to make. Totally unlike Albert Finney’s Poirot in Lumet’s version, who perhaps too readily agrees with the murderers’ choices, followed by the killers happily celebrating and toasting their revenge! A tad glib in retrospect whereas the Suchet version is more realistic and credible.

Meghan Markle has picked her wedding dress designer!
Thank God!

(Again, media has lost the ability to discriminate between hard and truly soft, ‘nothing’ news.)