To thine own self be true

Mondelez in their continuing takeover of old, trusted brands taste different to bad. The latest: Christie’s Fig Newtons. Formerly a classic, now frightfully inedible! You have been warned.

The Textbook Author (1980-2007) with over 1 million copies sold of senior high English titles and Conference Presenter (1980-2010) with appearances in 6 Canadian provinces

The Teenage Heart-Throb and Romantic (grade 9 here)

The Thinker (Vancouver, Stanley Park)

The Cyclist (8 months a year)

The Bird-Lover and Walker (fall, Laurier Park)

The Poet and Performer (member of Spiritus)

The Collector (records, CDs, DVDs, movie posters, stamps, books)

The Family Man

The Traveller and Nature-Lover (January in Scottsdale)

The Joker and Humourist (near the Haunted Bookshop,Sidney Booktown, B.C.)

The Grandfather (two grandsons)

The Musician, Songwriter, and Performer (left, grade 12 cast party for play and operetta–was in both)

The Student, Scholar, and Serious Reader (U of A grad, spring 1972)

………………………………………………………………………

…what we choose to express, share, or reveal of our real selves. Bits and pieces here and there. Only we ourselves know our own totality, and essential, inner selves including information from the past.

Butter Rum Lifesavers–my favorite Lifesavers.

(Available at Strathcona Antique Mall in Edmonton.)

Hot cross buns in March.

(Available at Safeway’s/Sobey’s.)

Yellow Daffodils

Green crème de menthe pie! A St. Pat’s wonder!

Second-best: Green crème de menthe over vanilla ice cream! Simply decadent.

Possibilities Matter

Process Matters

Personal Choices Matter

Freedom Matters

Being an Individual Matters

Language Matters

Thinking Matters

Education Matters

Knowing Oneself Matters

Consciousness Matters

Sensibility Matters

Spirit Matters/Soul Matters

Music Matters

Poetry Matters

Love Matters

Friendship Matters

Family Matters

Nature Matters

Classic Art Matters

Civilization Matters

These profoundly affect the quality of one’s personal life. Most of my life has been in pursuit of the above values. These have little to do with making a pile of money, obsession with image and status, angst about what people might think of my unconventional actions, or accepting others’ self-imposed conventional limits and limitations. My focus has long been on inner growth and development. There is much to be made sense of in life, beginning with one’s self and then ‘the rest of it’. And there is a richness of possibilities, experience, purpose, and significance waiting to be discovered regardless of one’s background/context, limits, and limitations.

The Luck of the Irish, 1948 in black-and-white or tinted green (Irish sections-garish green, New York black-and-white).

A beautiful Tyrone Power plays the perspicacious journalist Steven Fitzgerald, who, unknowingly encounters Horace, a leprechaun while visiting Ireland. Curious about the pookah, he briefly captures him to see his gold, but magnanimously lets him go, which puts the elf, played whimsically by Cecil Kellaway, into his permanent debt. Both he and Nora, the young woman Steve falls in love with in Ireland, end up coming to New York when Steve returns there to take a high-paying sell-out job with Augur (played by Lee J. Cobb), a control-freak newspaper-tycoon running for president, whom Steve disagrees with repeatedly and fundamentally.

Augur’s daughter Francis (played by Jayne Meadows (of The Honeymooners tv series) tries to capture Steve too, but you can guess the predictable outcome, aided by Steve’s new butler, played by Horace. The Irish accents of Horace, Nora, and her father will probably confute and mystify many viewers today. The music cues many of the changing emotional moods throughout the film, including an inappropriate “Greensleeves” (!), but keeps things playfully tuned and moving along.

The wry screenplay by Philip Dunne directed by Henry Koster are top-notch, and both Kellaway and Power are a delightful duo when together in their scenes. There is something special and magical about this oldie which still resonates today for anyone looking for a truly entertaining, delightful piece.

As a postscript, I would mention that Woody Allen obviously borrowed some of the basic conflicts from this classic for his last good movie Midnight in Paris with Hollywood standing in for New York and Paris standing in for Ireland.
Both are amusing, highly-recommended films.

Benvenuto! The beautiful world-famous Butchart Gardens in May with minimal tourists, again. Best gardens in Canada. One of Canada’s seven wonders, easily. This is one of the best examples of (wo)man-made beauty and natural creativity I can think of. Built in and around an empty limestone quarry, and then filled in with earth by the quarry owner’s wife, followed by extravagant, wowful, colorful planting. Mrs. Butchart turned commercial ugliness into ravishing aesthetic natural beauty beginning in the early 1900s. Natural beauty on its own is the best, of course, but that which is designed and created by humans can be a very close second in some cases. The amazing fragrance is simply nonpareil.