To thine own self be true

(My family came through on a couple of nice tees. This is the first edition of Hemingway’s classic with the myth-inspired image artwork.)

(My favorite Beatles album of all-time, released in 1966 after Rubber Soul, and before Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album art was done by German artist-bassist-friend of The Beatles Klaus Voorman; it was a memorable cut-and-paste-looking design. The title referred to an LP spinning on a turntable btw. My daughter’s better half/IT guy who services my blogs and our computers is wearing an original eclipse shirt they designed and wore on their Oregon eclipse wonder tour.)

(Nice sup with Beaujolais, steak, veggies from my daughter’s garden, and a DQ ice-cream cake.)

(Above: the rare first ed. UK dust jacket)

A novel I once taught when I started teaching high school English in 1972-3. It’s a 1957 UK SF novel set in an English village in which all the women become simultaneously, mysteriously pregnant during a bizarre gas ‘Dayout’.

The first (b & w 1960 UK) movie was based closely on the original. George Sanders and the kids are pretty good in it. It even had a sequel.

and their longing to own an inexpensive pet beginning in the 1950s

These were sold for very cheap through Woolworth’s in their pet section from the 1950s for decades. I bought a couple there, but they did not pan out for long. Later, there was a salmonella scare that slowed down and eventually stopped the pet turtle trade.

The plastic ‘lagoon’ containers are still sold today!

(from my Edmonton book collection; most of these pix from 1914–the first year of WW1)

(Way-y back: 1890. Hudson Bay always one of the first buildings in prairie cities because of the fur trade)

(Downtown, 1914)

(“It’s hard not to think of The Bay”)

(Take your pick of mode of transport: train, car, horse and wagon, streetcar)

(To say nothing of paddlewheel boat)

(now located at Fort Edmonton and faithfully reproduced like so; my wife and I stayed a weekend there in the early 2000s, parking back of the hotel, taking all meals there, sleeping in an authentic room, and walking around the park by ourselves early on a quiet Sunday)

(the original Vic Comp)

(Edmonton is often accused of not preserving its early buildings, but many schools are still up and intact)

(another well-known survivor when it was first going up)

(one of the city’s most beautiful buildings across form Sir Winston Churchill Square; my wife worked there in the summers of 1968-69. It was torn down to make way for what became a new Woodward’s and Edmonton Centre)

(Yes, the Old Strathcona Library is really that old!)

(ye olde hospitals)

(Fox farming and coal mining were early industries)

(Passenger trains ran to the nice CPR Station on the north side of the bridge on the north side of Jasper at 109 Street’ My wife and I took a train to Calgary across the High Level around 1971 when it was still running)

(So much depended on the railways in the early days–Edmonton was a nexus. Here you can see all the lines running into Edmonton. We took the trains to Jasper, Winnipeg, and Grand Centre (the little station was there when we arrived in 1972; since torn down)

(I’ve lived through)

-Professional athletes who stay with one team for life
-Sunday store closures
-Bridge parties
-Card catalogues
-Carbon paper copies
-Civil defense exercises in schools
-Open and widespread DDT spraying
-Drive-in movies
-Fire escapes on the outside of buildings and schools
-Fur coats
-Gas station attendants everywhere
-Handkerchiefs
-Hitchhiking everywhere
-Dr. house calls
-Marbles
-Clothes mending
-Home milk and bread delivery
-Boys delivering newspapers after school
-The olde nuclear family
-Penmanship widely taught and practised
-Rotary phones
-Slide rules
-Security-free airports
-Smoking everywhere
-Dogs running free everywhere
-Leaves burnt in the neighborhood in the fall
-Teenage dating
-Stockings and garter belts
-Telegrams
-Widespread, commonplace tonsillectomies
-White gloves for women
-Surf music
-Davy Crockett fad
-Hula hoop fad
-Pet turtles
-Mood rings and Pet rocks
-Twist fad
-Pocket transistor radio
-Humongous ghetto blasters
-Polaroid cameras with instant pictures
-Media spy culture and programming
-Beat culture
-Paper dresses and miniskirts
-Carnaby Street fashions
-Pop art
-Classics Illustrated comics
-Civil rights marches and protest songs
-Black-and-white movies
-American political assassinations
-Peanuts cartoons and culture
-Beatlemania
-Watergate
-Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis
-U.S.-Russian Space Race
-Hootenanys and folk rock
-Drug culture and music
-60s Counter-culture
-Expo ’67
-Woodstock
-Frisbees
-Best-seller non-fiction and self-help paperbacks
-MAD magazine
-Barbies
-Rise of Superheroes in Media
-Trading cards
-TV dinners
-Soda fountains                                                                                                                                        -Typewriters

Gerald S.H. Lock alias Gerald St.Maur (1935-2022). In pace requiescat.

My wife and I got to know Gerald and his wife Edna very well in 2018 when he was putting together his memorable, two-volume  Collected Poetry collection. We spent several evenings together at the Upper Crust and at the University of Alberta Faculty Club where one of Gerald’s artworks has long been featured on a prominent wall.

I first met Gerald after a Haven Reading when he befriended me and asked if I would write the above introduction to his works. We talked often and, at length, and he was very interested in poetry and poetics. The last time we met for coffee at Second Cup, he shared with me a well-thought-out prose piece on Wisdom.

Gerald was a remarkably talented man who had worked in the Arts after a career in Science, bridged by his time as Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies at U of A. He was a good reader and a perpetual hail-fellow-well-met. I will miss him and our interesting conversations. He was an exceptionally kind and friendly man: a true pleasure to know and engage with.

My and my wife’s sincere condolences to Edna and his family.

The Last Word goes to Gerald:

Danielle becomes first hurricane of the 2022 Atlantic season

Here in Alberta, another Danielle is poised to destroy our province and chop us off from Canada without input from Albertans. She has long been a clumsy, dangerous menace and is totally the wrong person to lead this province.

The newly released Mint issue honouring Oscar Peterson.

Recommended: This is a very representative sample of Oscar’s best works, many recorded live.

“How did it get so late so soon?”
-Dr. Seuss

“You may delay, but time will not.”
-Benjamin Franklin

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
-Michael Altshuler

“Although we try to control it in a million different ways, the only things you can ever really do to time are to enjoy it, or waste it. That’s it.”
-A.J. Compton

Certainly, those quotes would sum up a lot for me. Dr. Seuss gives us all the context we ever need on the passage of time; life is over sooner than we think and are all ready for.

It’s basically up to the individual how to spend his or her time. We often, too, lose many opportunities by delaying or postponing choices. (Take it from me, the house you want will be sold tomorrow if you fart around, thinking it’ll still be there on the market next week.) “You can never step in the same river twice.”-Heraclitus.

Compton’s quote boils down the main choice we all make; so we’d better be doing the enjoyable, pleasurable things we really want to do.

No question, the clock or watch is always ticking, and it is easy for time to slip by while you’re deep in the process of living. In that sense, time can pass you by.

Sometimes time drags or wears on (sometimes we even kill time to bear its slowness); other times, it gallops and goes faster than we want especially if we’re at leisure or lost in a pleasurable activity such as a vacation.

I don’t think there’s much a more annoying thing than wasting time or frittering away time on useless nothings.
Instead, “We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand.”-Marie Beynon Ray.

Some other favorite time quotes:

“He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
-William Blake

“In delay there lies no plenty.”
-William Shakespeare

“Music is the best means of digesting time.”
-W.H. Auden

“I cannot afford to waste my time making money.”
-Louis Agassiz

“The length of your life is less important than its depth.”
-Marilyn Vos Savant

If you stand still long enough, another year will roll by all on its own.

73 today. Wearing a tee shirt of the UK dust jacket of Huxley’s classic, which is very relevant these days.