To thine own self be true

a musician-songwriter. (He led and performed in bands for over 30 years.)

To get to an entry/selection: look up by month and year in right-hand column on any of blog’s pages.

Some of 30 personal song lyrics

Edges, Sept. 5, 2012

Time Together, Sept. 16, 2012

Until Next Year, Sept. 19, 2012

Detective face, Oct. 22, 2012 (written for local jazzer Andrew Glover)

Seasons, Nov. 6, 2012

Love’s Not Easy, Nov. 25, 2012

Sail Away, Dec. 21, 2014

Tropicana, Mar. 13, 2015

If You Let Me, Mar. 14, 2015

Popcorn Girl, Mar. 15, 2015

Recollections in a Room, Mar. 16, 2015

(Woody Allen, Stardust Memories)

Humor, Satire, Wit, Irony, Social Criticism

To get to an entry/selection: look up by month and year in right-hand column on any of blog’s pages.

Rutting season, Aug. 25, 2012

Of lust and latte, Sept. 2, 2012

Cave canem, Sept. 5, 2012

Teechurs aftur hrs, Sept. 17, 2012

The Marker (with Apologies to Kenny Rogers), Sept. 18, 2012

Death by Salesman, Sept. 18, 2012

Afternoon nap, Oct. 14, 2012

Driving to work, Oct. 14, 2012

The Two Women, Oct. 14, 2012

A Caution to Everybody, Feb. 15, 2013

Designed by Nature in Edmo, July 2, 2013

Old City Market, Shanghai, Aug. 11, 2013

Behind these fronts, Jan. 5, 2014

Winter garden, Jan. 5, 2014

Lunch Break, Mar. 28, 2014

Owed to Trivago Man, Aug. 2, 2014

My Last Premier (with Apologies to Robert Browning), Sept. 2, 2014

October Cyclist, Oct. 20, 2014

Of Truth, Cookie Monster & Dog, Nov. 8, 2014

The figure a sometime-poet-skater makes, Dec. 21, 2014

Emily Dickinson: A Summer Slam, Dec. 21, 2014

u walk, Dec. 29, 2014

Stopping Halfway up Beach Trail 3, UBC, Sunday Morning, Jan. 6, 2015

Road kill, Jan. 7, 2015

Rescue, Jan. 7, 2015

On being in an elevator with you, Jan. 11, 2015

On Banff Cable (found poem), Jan. 11, 2015

Intimations of Obscurity, Jan. 15, 2015

Homeward Hustle (doggerel), Jan. 11, 2015

Haiku Field Trip, (Jan. 11, 2015

Highway signs (found poems), Jan. 11, 2015

The guys’ house, Jan. 11, 2015

Grandson at Funeral, Jan. 11, 2015

bill bissett sings sam cooke, Jan. 11, 2015

Bear Woman @ Safeway, Jan. 11, 2015

Ode to Rod McKuen, Jan. 31, 2015

(note enclosed in one of my books; the upside-down book is perhaps somewhat telling)

Regardless of some well-publicized abusive behavior toward previous women in his life and extended problems with drugs and the bottle, it is hard not to feel empathy and some pity for the huge decline of Glen Campbell’s mental health at age 77 (Alzheimer’s and now aphasia), as well as respect for his publicly sharing his conditions with the public in a strong documentary, “I’ll Be Me”, broadcast last evening on CNN.

Campbell is shown to be an obviously ill person with a still-note-perfect, piercing voice and strong guitar-soloing skills. It is important to remember and contextualize him as the pre-Garth-Brooks megastar and tv show host of the late 1960s with a catalogue of hits including “Less of Me”, “Mary in the Morning”, “Gentle on My Mind”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “Where’s the Playground Susie?”, “True Grit”, “Try a Little Kindness’, “Rhinestone Cowboy”, “Country Boy”, “Southern Nights”, “Sunflower’, This Is Sarah’s Song”. It was appropriate and particularly touching to see no less than Paul McCartney thank him in person after a concert for all his great music.

It is simply amazing that Campbell, his family, and friends toured in 150 shows (!) in his last reasonable year until the illnesses finally ended this triumphant, touching farewell. I was especially impressed by his wife’s and daughter’s devotion to him and the no-holds barred info about specifics of his condition whether that included peeing in the corner of a room, or becoming borderline aggressive with golf clubs at home and picking his teeth with a knife while on tour. I highly recommend this profile of a true star in decline, especially to people with Alzheimer’s in their families. It’s a real eye-opener and has done much already in a short time to draw attention to this tragic medical condition.

will never love you.

Waking up late in the morning to find that the day has already begun for many out there. That and the realization that the world always goes on without us whether we are sleeping in or dead. It comes to the same thing.

blowin’ through the jasmine in my mind.”
–Seals and Crofts’ “Summer Breeze” (which I used to sing and play in lounges)

When it gets hot as it is today, I crack open the sliding patio doors and let the morning breeze flow in onto my head as I recline on a nearby love seat. Always reminds me of my bedroom back in Billingsley Manor (facing north), in grade 12, lying on my bed by the window, the cool breeze blowing over me on a spring morning, as I dreamed of all the bright dreams and possibilities to come.

On being offered Cheerios for breakfast: “I used to eat them when I was little.”

was in a remote northern Alberta town called Grand Centre which had just built a new Douglas Cardinal senior high school which served students from the town, the nearby town of Cold Lake, the native reserve Beaver Crossing, and the nearby Air Force base. Students of the day were just getting into pot though drinking was de rigeur in the area for young and old.
A few memories…
Early in the year the admin had to close down the smoking room they tried having inside the school. Kids had trashed the room and destroyed the carpet. They were then moved outside where they should have been in the first place. An initial failure of giving the student body some freedom.
In September, the admin set up tv monitors in the agora for anybody who was ‘free’ to watch the famed Canada-Russia series. Lots of kids skipped especially for the tie-breaker final game when Paul Henderson scored. I remember seeing that huge pandemonium goal along with many other hockey fan teachers.
One afternoon bands of students came to ‘capture’/collect each teacher unexpectedly and escorted them to the staffroom (reminiscent of the French Revolution scenes in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities). From there each one was ‘summoned’ to the central agora where the entire student body of several hundred had massed to savour the humiliation of seeing teachers as the targets of taunting and booing. The climax came when the principal (who was a casual laissez-faire guy who never wore a suit) was in the agora and they pressed him for the rest of the day off. To his credit, he remained jovial–they had had their fun–and now it was time to return to class, which we all did.
Later in the winter one of the teachers lost his wife to a car crash in a blizzard on the highway to Bonnyville (closer to Edmonton). GC even had a streaker incident (another fad of the times)
In the 2nd year, there is a yearbook picture of me with the student newspaper staff with a stogie sticking out of one girl’s mouth and a poster on the wall behind us of two rhinos humping with a large caption ‘Make Love, Not War’. The passionate World Famous Trike Race around the agora (complete with betting) was to follow as was the rock operetta I co-wrote–“First Butterfly in Grand Centre”, performed with many teachers in outrageous roles to an enthusiastic crowd.
Before summer break, the wild guidance counsellor I sang with evenings in the local lounge ran off with a cute 15-year-old, later coming back with her, married. The following year, after he left the school, he accidentally shot her on a hunting party. Shades of Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “She’d her apron wrapped about her and I took her for a swan” (“Polly Von”).
Hard to believe any learning or teaching got done, but the English Dept. taught thematic modules ( 2 per 5 credit course; students chose their themes; teachers created the curriculum). Kids could take options then and I created a memorable course on The Poetry of Rock (which included folk artists such as Dylan and Lightfoot) that was very popular as well as a course on The Poetry of Nature which had about 8 kids in it! (We drove in cars during class to a nearby lake one fall morning to generate some poems!) I also taught Drama 10 and an English 30 night class to local adults. I spent a lot of time running off spirit masters or doing mass runs on the school’s one photocopier to create the reading materials.

Yes, it was a wild and crazy time and a great time to be alive. I was the leader of a band of Air Force guys who did gigs in the area in bars, at legions, at weddings, at bases (including Wainwright one New Year’s for $1200–a lot of dough back then–and barracks accommodation). We became the band in the area, playing many smoke-filled rooms for masses of drunk people. It was customary for the band to drink before and after shows and during sets. I was in some danger of becoming an alcoholic had I stayed in GC, and that was one reason we moved back to Edmonton after 3 weird years.

Passed today at 93. What a suave, urbane, decent, witty, likable gentleman in The Avengers 1960s UK secret agent series! The episodes with Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) are charming and thoroughly entertaining despite some preposterous plots. In his honour, I will watch one of their black-and-white classics tonight (better than the colour season, in my humble opinion) and look forward at Xmas to seeing him again as Cratchit in the classic Alistair Sims’ A Christmas Carol.

“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.”
–Sir Thomas Browne