To thine own self be true

(Walt Whitman as pictured in 1891 Leaves of Grass)

(above: Robert Frost’s grave, Bennington, Vermont; example of significant future planning and following my bliss; all that is needed to complete a ‘future’ dream is personal will quite often; going to New England in late September one school year by myself–talk about limits and limitations–but I toured all 5 states and saw places associated with various New England writers including T.S. Eliot, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Louisa Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Emerson, and others)

(the past lives on daily in my imagination; Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, which accurately predicted the anarchy of contemporary terrorism, has been part of me since 1969 when I first read it; I now own a copy signed by Conrad, which I can look at whenever I want and be connected with his and the book’s real ongoing presence)

(the ephemeral present captured in a photograph; we basically ‘freeze’ moments which are visual correlatives of reality that once was and then passed in out personal daily process; otherwise, those here-and-now moments only exist in memory or shared memories, nowhere else; “People take pictures of each other just to prove that they really existed”–Ray Davies of The Kinks)

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…accepting it, the immediate presences of those around me, in particular not just seeing what is happening, but listening intently, picking up sounds outside the house, for instance, or sounds in other rooms. I am also simultaneously attuned to what’s next and the future. My life, after 22, became very organized and I spend a fair bit of time planning for events and eventualities, as well as possibilities. There are, for instance, three fleshed-out and largely written books I had to abandon in my 30 year textbook writing career. If I am travelling, I will pre-scope out attractions, restaurants, even the bedbug registry when booking accommodation!
The last few days I spent four intense hours reading and editing a friend’s manuscript, fully engaged in that present process, but preparing an organized, detailed response to her work. An example of intense engaged present-future experiencing combined.

But the past is very much part of my continuous, ongoing life. I have examples of it all around me at home, where I spend a lot of time, especially in winter. All around me, preferred images, visuals, and information that are reminders of the best of the past and the best of the best, IMHO. Unlike some people, I don’t live exclusively in the here and now. I am conscious also of both past and future with a slight nod of emphasis to the past which made me who and what I am. Always, you see, there is the large matter of context which goes being the frankly narrow Now.
Things roll on with two trips planned already for this year and a third likely at some point. There is the ongoing matter of downsizing with a huge garage sale coming in the spring. Paring down, moving slowly toward a less thing-ey lifestyle. Because these things get harder to get rid of the older one gets.
Financial matters are fully sorted out and even funeral arrangements will get done this year so the kids will have an easier time one inevitable day, and I will never have to even think about such ever again after it’s done. (*Planning is not at its max unless you have factored in those closest to you as well.)

I think one of the best qualities my consciousness has developed over time is its flexibility to switch on a dime from present to past or future, and larger views generally. The past, especially, is fine-tuned to the extent I can hear a vague snatch of music on an intercom in a crowded noisy restaurant, and be able to identify the tune, the approximate year, what I was doing at the time, and how I felt when I first heard the song! Often I find I can also remember entire details and conversations of given past moments, shocking people by quoting them back to them years later. Call it a remarkable ability/facility to still be living vicariously in the past, widening ongoing present experience and sensibility possibilities. A large, sensitive sensibility for sure.
“I am large, I contain multitudes”–Walt Whitman. That’s been my story for sure, over large tracts of time and past experience. But I doubt that I would have this largeness were it not for deep engagements in/with the past and carefully organized preparation for the future, both.

(couch pillow, living room)

“A traveler am I and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region within my soul.”
–Kahil Gibran

(top: 1st album; “Lenny keeps it short”; concise beautiful playing of standards; bottom: Lenny breaks out–pretty much what he sounded like at his best back then, live)

(top: a rare album; Chet and Lenny play mostly country, acoustic; “Lenny’s dream come true” playing with one of his influences Chet, a father-figure; bottom: amazing breakout album with clarinetist  Brad Terry)

(top: playing with T.O. buddy Dave Young, himself a legendary acoustic bassist; bottom: the most recent CD bootleg release, recorded just before he was killed)

(top: Lenny solo; includes “Five O’ Clock Bells’; bottom: Lenny solo, while ‘drying out’ in a friend’s cabin)

(this is one of many other good albums; be sure to catch Lenny’s time with the legendary Don Francks as a member of Three and his album with another major influence–Tal Farlow)

(you get to see what it was like to play live with Brad, improvising in front of an audience; an awesome fusion)

(a rare document of Lenny demonstrating his style and approach; thanks Randy Bachman, one of Lenny’s biggest fans and students of guitar, for this one)

(the best book on Lenny; there is another one–many photos–which has been done by his Winnipeg family which is also recommended)

(if you are a jazz guitar player, this is a must–gives you more insight tnto “how Lenny did it”)

If someone is sincerely interested in jazz guitarists and who was the greatest, there is only one name: Lenny Breau. Lenny is/was very familiar to me and anyone who grew up listening to music in 1960s-70s Winnipeg. He was The Main Man. Guitarists everywhere were amazed when they heard him for the first time for many reasons, starting with his ability to play transcendent jazz on electric 6 & 12, Spanish guitar, and his own invention–the 7 string (There were never enough notes for Lenny to play that he had to add the 7th string). He also picked bass, chorded, and played lead/melody at the same time effortlessly.

Lenny’s career began as a child prodigy, playing in his parents’ (Hal Lone Pine and Betty Cody) travelling country band. He then quickly came of age in his home base of Winnipeg, learning from the jazz greats and quickly initiating his own unique style. He then formed a trio–a pattern which he would repeat over the years with different musicians along with periodic duos. If you ever heard him play solo, you would still be mesmerized, so powerful was his playing.

Lenny eventually signed with Chet Atkins for his first two albums and the legend was established on vinyl and posterity; many albums followed. but always it was sublime to hear him play in person. He played with many stars including Anne Murray, but, like so many jazz musicians, he got mixed up and lost in drugs–something that dashed any hopes of a major, successful, long-term career. Finally he was found murdered in an L.A. swimming pool and his song was ended tragically.

I used to see Lenny on CBC tv, then at the U of W, and memorably one night at The Marigold restaurant, when the minimum drinking age was 21, with my underage musical friends Danny Casavant (worked with Randy Bachman) , Glen Hall (now a T.O. jazz fixture), and Ian Gardiner (bassist for Burton Cummings–Ian and Glenn backed me in my own 1968-69 folk trio ). We thought we’d got away with one after we ordered drinks, and until the manager asked for IDs, sadly having to leave while Lenny was playing. Well, it had been worth the risk and trouble just to see Lenny play for a bit from up close at a front table.

Years later, I helped Emily Hughes, his Edmonton daughter, write the proposal that got her the famous Bravo documentary about her Dad. It was an honour to do that much to help her get the long-overdue documentary that her Dad so richly deserved. Today I still have a number of rare items including the documentary, a copy of the CBC special (about Lenny’s first trip to Nashville to work with Chet on the first two albums), and a CBC radio documentary on Lenny’s life and career with Ross Porter.

Anyway, I am steeped in Lenny lore, and even wrote an elegy to/for him about his tragic death, shown below. Ironically, I wrote it the August day he was killed, while with my family, visiting in Winnipeg. It alludes to his best, moving, intimate vocal “Five O’Clock Bells” and “My Funny Valentine”, one of his favorite signature tunes.

Lament for Lenny

Can’t sleep–
long thin cloud
over Winnipeg
this morning

Lenny’s dead
no five o’clock bells
or aficionados
weeping in the streets

just wind-rippled puddles
cathedral silence
& funeral-like cars
backed up for work
on Portage Avenue

Soft flamenco strum
make a balm
of warm pure notes
for Lenny’s soul today
Tell God to be kind
to funny valentine men

That time of year again in Edmo. Jack London stuff out there this morning. Exposed flesh freezing in less than a minute. Stay warm!

(photo by RD)

Thus it was that patterns became a driving force in my own teaching and the writing of textbooks. The awareness of patterns, the possibility of patterns, the understanding of patterns, the appreciations of patterns, and the applications of patterns.
I was teaching in Grand Centre, AB, in my second year of teaching when I encountered theme teaching. After that, I set up and taught thematic courses, and taught, largely by theme in my courses. From the tables of contents in my textbooks of yore, you can see this overriding concept at work and how it organizes learning, understandings, and consciousness.
For me, then, a fair chunk of my life has been about themes and ideas stemming from those school days (Good and Evil, Reality vs. Illusion, etc.) to those found the past 4 1/2 years in this blog (from the first month: key ideas–Conferring the Meanings of One’s Own Life, On the Necessity of Being an Individual; basic patterns: Presence and Non-presence, Connected and ‘Removed’).

Above all, I am a fully conscious individual and thinker, and have long been. It is something I became in the process of my life so far via a natural and conscious individual evolution and self-actualization, long-term. (I attribute all of this to my university education, my teaching experiences, my textbook and blog writing, my poetry, my thinking, my explorations of/in other arts, and my many past presentations and workshops.)

There are many more patterns to come and to articulate through this blog. The past and the ideas of great writers and thinkers provide a non-stop frame of reference for all the madness and absurdity unfolding in the world today. Your faithful correspondent will continue to point out salient points and patterns as long as this blog runs.

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“My eyes can dimly see/The pattern of my life/And the puzzle that is me.”

–Paul Simon, “Patterns”

(highly recommended documentary on a major paradigm-shifter of the ’60s, Rachel Carson)

that money, making money, and The Economy are what are the most important things in life and the world.
Before this, last seen in the late 1900s, Great Men and Women were seen as drivers of significant change and history.
For the record, the last truly Great Men and Women were Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, the current Dalai Lama, Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Mother Teresa, Rachel Carson, and Walt Disney. In Canada, we’ve had only one–Terry Fox.

I think it is ironic and significant that most of these people are ignored and forgotten by the mass of people living in the West today. It’s possible we may have another truly Great Man or Woman on the scale of past history. But only because of something large he or she does to stop world war and save the planet from extinction.

How Wonderbra and jockstraps became a part of Canada’s history

Ten Legends reveal how to make money in the coming year

Buying used: I need a car that will fit my 6 foot-2 teen and his double bass

Fifty Shades versus BDSM: the reality of consent

Put snow chains on your tires with the push of a button

The secret life of New York’s pigs

What a rehab from a broken femur looks like

Want to stay slim? Up your flavinoid uptake

Racewalk Evan Dunfee’s high-fat diet: ‘You get used to eating packets of butter’

Masaya Nakamura was the game entrepreneur behind Pac-Man

British Columbia: The province joins elite global list as grower of prized truffles

Super Bowl tickets setting fans back thousands

Making It: What it takes to turn a new fashion designer into an industry darling
………………………….
There you go. It’s all about money, deals, sex, physical appearances, status, and exposes.

I wrote for the high school paper, The Huskian. In gr. 10, I covered the boys’ volleyball and basketball, even travelling on the road with the team. My honesty and lack of tact got me a threat one day when a big athlete I didn’t know came into my classroom and said “I lacked intestinal fortitude” for criticizing the team’s losses.
In gr. 12, I wrote the pieced attached after a Friday afternoon school hootenanny; folk music was at its height, and lots of college-agers were forming groups playing coffee houses and even schools.

Not much different than the one I wrote in 1967.
There was no multiple choice component. It was all written and you had to be a good prose writer.
The exam mark was worth 100% of your school year in English and other subjects.
The questions came from the course readings so you had to be well-familiar with the main works to do well
For drama section, we had studied both plays.
The essay as literature section required you knew well all the essays studied.
29% of the exam was on poetry.
The exam went a rather hectic, exhausting 2 1/2 hrs.
The questions required close reading and critical application to texts.
You definitely had to know exactly what was being asked for in the questions which could be confusing at first glance.
Because of a rather strange twist of fate, I got 60 on this exam, 69 in Math, 79 in Chemistry, 58 in French, and 63 in Physics. A lot of kids at our schools flunked the pilot PSSC Physics, even those in the top class. I was sure I was going to fail the year and have to repeat the exams and course. Instead, with my passes, I entered U of Wpg.’s Arts program, majoring in English.

In elementary school for years, the milkman would slip into the classroom, read the order on the blackboard, then leave whatever small-carton-milks requested on the chalk ledge. Milk was then consumed by the kids at recess or lunch. His appearance would always happily distract kids, especially if a driver changed. An order was ratioed, typically, at approximately 24 chocolate, 5 white, and not everyone could afford school milk.