To thine own self be true

Every year at this time I break out my favorite Christmas CD–the diamond anniversary edition of Holiday Inn and White Christmas with songs by the great Irving Berlin. Warm memories of watching those movies annually with my parents on the old black and white through the ’50s and ’60s, remembering their enthusiasm for the vision of life and Christmas presented by those two classics. The big band sounds of another era–the ’40s and ’50s–and the best and happiest of what they remembered of their times–all come back with each song.

Listening to the CD, I remember my Dad singing along with Bing Crosby, the feeling I had while watching each song or dance number. Exquisite and exceedingly sweet or precious–all of it. It all comes back–those times, those memories, those deep bonds, the feelings of those times–the ’40s and ”50s, magically communicated 74 years later (Holiday Inn, 1942) and 62 years later (White Christmas, 1954), the memories of war camaraderie in the latter movie, and the sorts of extremes one would go to, to honour those who had once been part of one’s (war) life. So special, remarkable, and now-thoroughly, but charmingly passé.

I appreciate the places and memories I return to each year thanks to the following songs:
Happy Holiday
White Christmas
I’ll Capture Your Heart
You’re Easy to Dance With
Lazy
Abraham
Be Careful It’s My Heart
I Can’t Tell a Lie
Easter Parade
Song of Freedom
I’ve Got Plenty to Be Thankful For
Let’s Start the New Year Right
Snow
Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep
What Can You Do with a General?
The Old Man/Gee I Wish I Was Back in the Army

Once one gets past the tragic darkness in/of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, there are these two wonderful movie takes on Christmas, and if one ever needs more of a lift, one needs look no further than an old New Year’s tv favorite–the effervescent Singin’ in the Rain with the ever-sunniful Gene Kelly.

Romance, comedy, history, and making-your-own-fun-and dreams-come-true. All such large and wonderful seasonal worlds that lift any sagging year-end spirits–movies and music that have delightfully transcended time and our oh-so-limited/limiting, diminishing modern era.

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons–
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes–

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us–
We can find no scar,
But internal difference–
Where the Meanings, are–

None may teach it–Any–
‘Tis the Seal Despair–
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air–

When it comes, the Landscape listens–
Shadows–hold their breath–
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death–

(original version of this poem; photo by RD)

A B.C. teacher at a private school got fired for answering a student who had asked him what he thought of abortion. He said he didn’t believe in it, was later forced to apologize to the student in class in front of administration and was subsequently fired.

This has been coming for some time. In 2000-2001, I experienced two incidents in which I realized teachers had no more credible authority in classes, when admin did not back or support me, while parents interfered with normal classroom process. (One of them threateningly, which signalled it was about time for me to retire early.). Power and control had changed hands even then, and since then, teachers have had to conform totally to p.c. or the whims of students and parents.

It’s 1984 in today’s classrooms and the witch-hunters are students and parents. It is no longer possible for teachers to express an opinion or to give students answers which are unwanted. teachers are an endangered species. Independent thought is endangered, too.

we have now officially entered the McCarthy witch-hunt era again with a B.C. teacher at a private school being fired when asked his opinion on abortion by a student (he simply said he was against it). The agenda-ed witch-hunters are out there looking for victims. It is no longer safe for teachers to have a personal opinion in schools anymore. Totally nuts. I could see this stuff coming in 2000-2001 just before I left teaching. Loopy students and crazy, violent parents. Even then, teachers were no longer regarded as credible authority figures and they were given zilch support in conflicts from higher-ups in any conflicts that arose.

(used to take down elephants) revealed enough doses to kill everyone in Canada. Mankind is determined to destroy itself utterly one way or another. Pretty obvious given how good drugs there are that keep people alive and the fact that so many people would rather deliberately choose to take the deadly kind, trying to ‘off’ themselves. Only 1 grain of carfentanil can kill a person.

Who could ever forget “Ipanema”
and the wisp, silky sounds
accompanying Astrud
on her husband’s song?
Clearly classic, like forever.
You played both sad and sweet
opening up the melancholy
aloneness of our hearts
from the inside.

Decades later,
posthumously no less,
you sprang free from death
with Barron’s rich piano
live in Copenhagen,
dancing forever
beyond your cancer.
“Night and Day”,
“People Time”–
How you guys cooked!
A wonder and miracle of two.

Later I watched you, magically
play one retro summer eve
in a California vineyard
before a huge appreciative throng,
unlike any dive you had formerly
played in your heroin free-fall daze,
fixes feeding your oh-so-eloquent pain.

Ah, the tunes and greats you knew
or had known and internalized
like no other jazzer since.
“Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most”.
“Lush Life”, “Blood Count”,
Billy Strayhorn.
Stan the Mellow Man affecting
the quality of our inner jazz lives,
your ashes asleep
off Marina del Rey.

(People Time: his last CD with Kenny Barron, was released posthumously)

Peter Vaughan, 93, who played Anthony Hopkins’ butler-father who was becoming senile in the excellent Remains of the Day. He did a lot of UK tv work, in one case being a memorable Dickens’ villain with his long chin and nose. We will not see his like again.

when it’s too frigid for crows and magpies to bother with garbage bags:
Canadian Tire, duck tape, and gasline antifreeze.

(left to right: RD, Glen Kirkland, Dean McKenzie–all of us senior high school teachers who started reading poetry together beginning in the late 1980s)

My dear dead friends in Spiritus, a glorious performance poetry trio of the 1990s. We often read in December; it’s always a magical time of the year. I remember Dean reading at Timothy’s, a defunct café where the DQ is now at Whyte & Calgary Trail. It was a bitterly cold Friday evening and after Dean had read several poems to a near-empty house, a drunk wandered in and took exception to Dean’s free verse as ‘real poetry’, which then led to a shouting match with the drunk reciting Robert Service verse against Dean’s own poetic rebuttals. As I recall, Dean ‘won’ and the drunk wandered off into the frozen North.
Another time, rehearsing my long Glenn Gould poem based on his Idea of North documentary, one weekend evening in the Strathcona School caretaker’s lunchroom, the rest of the school deserted. Yeah, those times were and still are priceless. The picture above shows us at Dean’s house one December day. Christmas always evokes memories of those closest to us who are no longer here.

Second Cup’s Holiday tea with its fruity scent always expresses/suggests Christmas for me. That and mulled wine.

Interesting how a smell can evoke strong seasonal consciousness and memories.