To thine own self be true

at my daughter’s place in Ellerslie.

Skye celebrating rebirth, renewal, hope, and spring.

that made Jeremy Irons–right–a star. (Here, with Anthony Andrews–left–as Sebastian in his best-ever role)

true love is letting go.”

I will never forget my 17-year-old aunt bringing this album home when she lived with us for a few years before getting married. I got to play the hits from it, “Party Doll” and “Hula Love” (songs on YouTube), which Buddy wrote. Buddy was originally from Texas, toured many years after and, strangely enough, settled in the small Manitoba town of Dominion City near the North Dakota border.

Lyrics for “Hula Love”

On the isle of Filalilla out Hawaii way
A hula maiden gay strolled by a moonlit bay
There come a to court her over the water
From a savage Zingazulu land
A Bolo chieftain grand sang her this lay

And he sang
Hulu Hawaii hula
Smile on your zing gang a zula
Moon shine above
On their sweet jungle love
For you my bolo is swinging
For you my love song I’m singing
Come be my Hula Hula love

But the chieftain from the peaceful Filalilla land
Would not give him her hand
Her lover took his stand
Through the rattle of the battle
As she heard his sweet voice calm and true
They fled in his canoe over water blue

And he sang
Hulu Hawaii hula
Smile on your zing gang a zula
Moon shine above
On your sweet jungle love
For you my bolo is swinging
For you my love song I’m singing
Come be my Hula Hula love

………………………….

Despite the relative innocence and romance of the lyric, it would likely be considered politically incorrect “Brave New World”.

But, I mostly recall the tricky mouthful of lyrics that Buddy sang a la Dr. Seuss rhyming books and “The Auctioneer” classic song.

as you started to peel it, the molecules began to spread outward and instantly you heard what sounded like a head alerted on a bed upstairs, four feet hitting the floor, and a mad dash down the ten-step stairway, and suddenly, there would be a black female miniature poodle on the kitchen floor beside one, looking up with very intense eyes and tongue anxiously wiping across her mouth.

(Hasn’t happened for 18 years, but I remember this as clearly as those many times peeling oranges with a sensitive-nosed dog in the house.)

the three of them crammed in, emptying their mail slots.

One of the men said to her, “I’d like to take you to lunch tomorrow.”

She turned instantly to the second man and said, smiling, “Why don’t you come, too?”

“Three’s a crowd,” the second man replied.

“Ah, come on, it’ll be fun.”

“I don’t think that was the original plan.”

And so he bowed out.

After the long weekend on Tuesday morning, there was excitement among staff at school that the lunch couple was suddenly engaged.

(The kind of thing that happened at work more than once that I can recall in my 30 year teaching career.)

Donald Trump is defending himself for paying off Stormy Daniels. As Lawrence O’Donnell astutely pointed out, he’s not aware of Jesus Christ ever paying off a porn star.

Good old Paddy of the long-defunct Gage Publishing came to Edmonton in the hot summer of 1978 to sign me and Glen Kirkland to a three book Connections series contract for grade 10-12 general/non-academic streams in Canada.

A true gentleman, he had a lot of character and wore a white smoking jacket to the first (Vancouver) social function we attended after the books came out! A lover/student of language, he single-handedly oversaw the 1983 Gage Canadian Dictionary.

He left his Toronto job around 1984 when he inherited a family member’s U.K. country estate and became a ‘laird of the manor’ overnight, as shown here. He was a true character, a one-of-the-olde-school-Brit-kind.

Without him, I would never had a second/sideline career spanning 30 years of writing and editing books for senior-high school students, of which over a million were eventually sold, with each province using many of them. That also included doing well over 100 teacher workshops and conventions.

Thank you, Paddy, for your respect, faith, and trust in me at age 28.

In it, a self-chosen defining identity, a symbolic archetypal youth attitude, and a definition of a a recurring idea and age.