To thine own self be true

Never been better.

Movement and moving forward. The things that really need doing. The unique momentous windows and opportunities. The actualization of elusive, transitory live, in-person Presence/s. The desires, dreams, plans, and processes. The connecting, closeness, and necessary intimacy. The selective, selected social interaction. If not today, when exactly?

12 noon, sitting at table on the south edge of the voted #1 patio for lunch in Canada–The Macdonald Hotel, sun blazing down, blue skies, sipping a Stella on tap, looking out at the flowers and the top river valley view in town, waiting for my co-author-friend to arrive, contemplating the Summerberry salad with chicken breast on the menu. The $25  paid for a parking spot for 3 leisurely hrs. right in front of the hotel.

We have worked long and hard in our lives to get where we are. So many people would never do something like this so pointedly and without the least concern for the bottom-line. How many times do we all live? It’s just that simple, straightforward, and clear every day with these sublime periodic pleasures like today’s. Money is mainly good for what it can buy in the way of chosen pleasure, not stuck, unused, miserly away under a Scrooge mattress.

(as selected by Richard Davies)

The Godfather I and II (really one long film) (1972-1974)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
All About Eve (1950)
Psycho (1960)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The Graduate (1967)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
King Kong (1933)
The Third Man (1949)
Fantasia (1950)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
A Hard Day`s Night (1964)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
North by Northwest (1959)
Annie Hall (1977)
La Dolce Vita (1961)
War and Peace (1964-1967)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Jaws (1975)
Persona (1966)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest (1976)
American Graffiti (1973)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Nashville (1975)
Schindler`s List (1993)
Blow-Up (1966)
Wings of Desire (1988)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
The Verdict (1982)
High Noon (1952)
Klute (1971)
A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946)
Rear Window (1954)
Network (1976)
Patton (1970)
Hamlet (1948)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)

……………………

late additions:

12 Angry Men (1957)

Ran (1985)

The dangers of watching nothing but Netflix: How many of the above are in their system? Subscribers are kidding themselves if they really think they are getting great or classic movies on Netflix with their limited/limiting offers.

Most of my choices were from the 1940s to 1970s. My list ends in 1993. I don’t know that there’s anything after that I’d consider a bona-fide classic in the traditional/lasting/old-skool sense of the word after that date.

Foreignly-speaking, Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Wenders, Bondarchuk, Lester, Reed, Olivier, Powell/Pressburger, Kurosawa, and Kubrick made the list.

from World Breastfeeding Week 2016:

“Breastfeeding is a key to sustainable development.”

Just consider the possibilities….

Someone’s been reading too much Suzuki methinks.

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from our sources of strength.”
–Rachel Carson

“Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons…every wild lesson a love lesson…”
–John Muir

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“The battle for conservation will go on endlessly. It is part of the universal warfare between right and wrong.”
–John Muir

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use with love and respect.”
–Aldo Leopold

“if…we can live without goose music, we may as well do away with stars, of sunsets…”
–Aldo Leopold

“[A]…singular aspect of the wilderness is that it gratifies every one of the senses.”
–Robert Marshall

“The enjoyment of solitude…and the beauty of undefined panoramas is absolutely essential to happiness.”
–Robert Marshall

“Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.”
–Edward Abbey

“In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry in fact.”
–Edward Abbey

“We are still in transition from the notion of man as master of the earth to the notion of man as part of it.”
–Wallace Stegner

(We played for thousands. I was the leader, male singer, and rhythm guitarist. The other guys from the base had to keep their hair short for their jobs. I was the hippie maverick schoolteacher from ‘town’–Grand Centre.)

It all came back sitting there in the big barn listening to Mavericks’ dance music, people jumping up spontaneously to dance. My band Betty Plus Four of CFB Cold Lake played these kinds of large country barns, air-force hangers and clubs. The main difference was there was no smoking in RC’s venue, though I got my retro smoke quota being routed thru the casino. A very transporting experience, the smell of beer, drunks acting cute, women wanting to shake their booty on the dance floor. Yeah, a lot of mem’ries.

The audience digging up money for an extra set or two long after the band figured it had played its last set. Keeping the dance floor filled with one song segueing into the next. Yeah, it could have gone on (and did without me) after I returned to Edmonton, taking an offered hard-to-get job with ESPB. Hey, it took me all that summer and fall to ‘dry out’ what with so many people buying us drinks; we used to order drinks every break and during set-up and take-down anyway. I could easily have become an alcoholic, but was definitely on the road to a music career, writing my own songs and having a band to perform them a la Neil Diamond’s Live at the Troubador.

It was all within reach. A true crossroads and climax. But I chose family and career over continuing with what was a very good, fun thing, entertaining hundreds of people a night, and being in control of a good band and each song spontaneously played. Yeah, it all came back Saturday. The leader-songwriter Raul Malo being admired and appreciated, etc. by the big crowd certainly resounded with me.

I missed the regular band initially, but in retrospect, I still don’t regret the big choice I made. Other, equally exciting opportunities came up including comedic entertaining, teaching from my own textbooks, writing full-time, happy successful kids, two Fringe plays, a rare film classification job, wild teacher bands, book, music and movie collecting, gardening, travel, blogging, and enough of a nest egg for the remaining years and continuing freedom and self-directed choices.

by Richard Davies

1. What is the most famous poem in Canadian history? Who is the author? (His poem was on the old $10 bill.)
2. What is the federal recognition given out annually since the 1930s for significant Canadian writing in each genre, each year?
3. Who is the Montreal writer who started as a poet and ‘pornographic’ novelist, and who later morphed into Canada’s internationally-known singer-songwriter-performer-cult figure?
4. Which P.E.I. writer has the most famous house on the island and whose children’s works have drawn over 100,000 Japanese fan-tourists?
5. Hugh MacLennan (tied with Michael Ondaatje for most GGs) is most famous for his 1960s novel about French- and English-Canadians in conflict in Quebec. What is it called?
6. Who was Winnipeg’s first famous novelist who wrote several significant’ women’s novels’ set in small prairie towns? (One of her books was famously banned in Ontario.)
7. Who was Canada’s most famous humorist writer of many popular books? (He taught Economics at McGill. There is an award named after him.)
8. W.O. Mitchell wrote the classic coming-of-age Canadian prairie novel called?
9. Which acclaimed Canadian short-story writer is so famous she is recognized in many other countries and was recently saluted by a coin and stamp issued in her own country?
10.Which Jewish-Canadian Montreal novelist had a wicked wit and had movies made of his books? (His prose was often published in prominent American magazines, too.)
11.Who has sold more poetry books than any other Canadian poet? (He was a mere bank teller when he became our most famous, quoted writer of his time.)
12.Who is the first significant Aboriginal-Canadian woman writer who had an international following? (She has a cairn dedicated to her in Stanley Park, Vancouver.)
13.Which widely-read, best-selling, sardonic Canadian woman writer has written in all genres and developed her own digital autograph pen to reduce effort at signings?
14.Which famous popular children’s story by Roch Carrier was quoted on the old Canadian $5 bill?
15.Who was the first prolific, widely-read French-speaking woman writer whose work was published in both English and French in Canada? (She was born in St. Boniface, MB, and her childhood home is now an historic literary attraction.)

Bonus question freebie–count for a bonus correct answer (quiz remains out of 15 regardless)
Who was ‘Samuel Marchbanks’, the Massey College master of trilogy novels in Canada?

Answers:
1. “In Flanders Fields” John McCrae
2. Governor-General’s Award
3. Leonard Cohen
4. Lucy Maude Montgomery
5. Two Solitudes
6. Margaret Laurence
7. Stephen Leacock
8. Who Has Seen the Wind
9. Alice Munro
10.Mordecai Richler
11.Robert Service
12.Pauline Johnson
13.Margaret Atwood
14.”The Hockey Sweater”
15.Gabrielle Roy
bonus: Robertson Davies

Score:

Ignorant/Poor/Insufficient 0-5: You know little or nothing about this country’s great literary heritage and culture regardless of how much education you have. You need to familiarize yourself more with our country’s literature. You may be a newcomer to Canada who’s passed the basic test on Canadian culture and lifestyle in order to become a Canadian or be a victim of the gutting of basic Canadian information, literature, history, and culture in schools, universities, and government libraries (begun under Stephen Harper).

Average to Good 6-10: At some point you’ve read or studied some Canadian literature and are familiar with some of the key names from CanLit history. You should feel some national cultural and educational pride. Give yourself a pat on the back for knowing basic facts and important information about our country’s writers and core, bedrock literature highlights.

Knowledgeable/Proficient 11-15: You were likely educated before 1990 A.D. in this country and may even have studied several Canadian writers and works. You are likely well-educated and actually know pre-2000 Canadian literature facts and highlights quite well. You are a true Canadiana fan who may also have a reasonable background in literature, literary studies, and books of our nation.

as rendered by Michaelhdavies.com on the Frame channel’s Parks Canada feature on Auyuittuq. Nice attention to detail. Great choices of subject matter and views. Of most interest perhaps to hikers and wilderness types, but stunning and awesome for armchair tourists as well. I would venture to guesstimate that over 90% of cable viewers miss this gem.

in air-conditioned offices, hallways, and buildings. It can only be lived, breathed, felt, and sensed outside in varying conditions.