Spending some delightful days in Amsterdam with friends. It rains. It shines. The talk flows. The laughter bubbles over.
This city holds many fond memories of youthful escapades I shared while visiting a South African dancer friend. Riding through the city on the back of his rackety bicycle in the wee hours of the morning. He'd rush into the company ballet class having consumed two cups of strong Dutch coffee. No sleep. He'd finish the day's rehearsal with an empty pack of cigarettes. Manage an evening performance, which he'd get free ticket for me to watch. Then we were off to a bar with theater friends.
The sound of the sea greets me in the dark hour before dawn. Salty foam from the white caps out at sea mingle with the turbulent sandy swirl of waves breaking over the coral reef just outside me open bedroom window.
There is a rhythmic intake of silence then a swooshing sound, and thankfully the thunder of a wave breaking below. My mind drops back into a dream on the plains of an Arabian desert. Sultans. Silk. Caravans. Salt. Spices. Images that jumped out of the pages of the book I am reading. It lies half open with my thumb marking my spot. The reading lamp draws night creatures even in the coming dawn.
Bird song. First tentatively. Chirp. Breep. Cheep. Then a sudden wild burst of abandonment. A symphony.
My breath changes. My limbs shift. My mind wakens again, but this time to the day.
Summer is here and the only thing I can say is, "Are you kidding?" I'm not going to talk about the weather, no matter how strange and horrible it might be. Instead, I've decided to do a series of "Homage to my Umbrella" collages, with little or no comment.
Long ago, there was a time when I loved nothing better than going for walks during storms. Ah, my early 20s, when primal fears and melancholic indulgences ran amok. Fortunately, I had some chums who would accompany me on these excursions. Snow, sleet, fog, torrential rains... all good elements to batter down my moodiness.
Looking back on those days, I imagine the me-then calling up today and asking the me-now to go out for a walk and the only thing that comes to mind is, "Are you kidding?"
Our family has a contest going on along the lines "What was mom thinking?" Mothers (and fathers) are meant to help raise their children to be strong and healthy. To do this, they need to feed their children a balanced diet. So, our contest is to establish acts of gross wrong-doing in meeting children's nutritional needs.
My brother once witnessed an act of pure genius... in some small Scottish diner, a mother served her children French Fry sandwiches for breakfast! French Fries between two slices of toasted white bread. (OK, there were doses of ketchup in between as well.)
So, my brother has held the record for the best bad meal for the last 23 years! Oh, we've tried, but no matter what we've seen, the Scottish French Fry Breakfast Sandwich has always come out on top. Until today...
I saw my prize at a school sport event. The parents had set up a breakfast buffet for the school children. Right in the middle of the buffet table, on a big aluminum platter, was a mountain of soft white bread rolls with squished chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies in between. Here is the recipe,
Take one white bread roll
Slice through the middle
Take one chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies
Squish flat
Place between bread roll
I am not joking. Appalled, I talked to one of my friends about it. "Oh, I used to sneak to the local store and buy one of those on the way to school when I was a kid." This creation is not the invention of a crazy mother, it's actually tradition here!
Now, I am all for French fries and sweets, but for breakfast... Anyways, this creation is a slam dunk for upsurging my brother's prize, so I can't complain.
What is the worse you every saw a parent giving their children to eat?
In the corner of my cupboard, underneath a pile of clothes I no longer fit in, is a t-shirt from my dad. There is a photo image of an “Old Fart” (him) parachuting. He’s wearing a helmet of sorts. His face is squeeze up almost beyond recognition. His arms are extended outwards. He’s in the middle of a free fall. There is this wonderful goofy expression on his face.
The story behind this t-shirt is the following…
On the occasion of my father’s 70th birthday, he spontaneously decided to gift himself a trip to Australia. A friend of his had sailed his boat from Canada to Chile, and then over to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. My father, apparently on a whim, decided to visit his friend and spend some time with him on his boat.
He took a bus journey through the outback of Australia: Sydney to a harbour where his chum’s boat was anchoured in the Great Barrier Reef. While making the journey, he noticed a sign in some town offering tandem parachuting adventures. Pay up front. Climb onto the plane. Make a jump.
Years before, he’d mentioned he had only two regrets; not having parachuted and not having gone paragliding. So, during that bus stop in the middle of Australia, he thought, “What the heck.” He walked up to the airfield and asked to be on their next jump.
He went up and parachuted, but he was so overwhelmed by the experience, his mind blanked. Therefore, he went up a second time. Just so he could remember the experience. It was on the second jump, the photo was taken.
He got the t-shirts printed up for his family as a way of announcing the event. We had no idea. I’m not sure any one of us would have given his our blessing if he had decided to ask us if we thought parachuting for the first time at 70 years old was a good thing.
Now, many years later, I toast you, Dave, for your craziness. Thank heavens you took the jump. Thank heavens you showed us that life is meant to take risks.
Flying in a motorized paraglider over one of the most diverse continents in the world, George Steinmetz captures in his photographs the stunning beauty, potential and hope of Africa's landscapes and people. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/publication/african-air
This last winter, I saw a photo exhibit of George Steinmetz in Berlin. It was a series of macro-organisms (animals, birds, insects) motifs. Stunning.
One thing that was puzzling about some of the photos the place they were taken from. The perspective of up above, but close gave a remarkable viewpoint. In this video, I discovered why. Make sure you look at the video full screen.
Just came back from a few days away down to southern Germany. Golden warm south,
Lovely. But, I missed the blues of north,
Spending this day making collages and listening to a wonderful reading of Artemis Fowl's first book.
I love this children's fantasy series. If you like fantasy books and do not know the series, or if you have children >10 years, do yourselves a favour and give it a try.
Stupendous! In support of Mickey Smith's mastery, please watch, enjoy, and spread his work onwards into the world. For as he explains,
"It's an art form in itself. (We are) Silent work horses of the surfing world... Most folk don't even know who we are, what we do, or how we even do it, let alone want to pay us for it."
Oh heavens, this site is so much fun! For all of you, young and old, this is one smart software tool to experiment with. For you who are parents or educators, there are a lot of stories you and your children can come up with using the information here.
Did any of you watch the series, Interview Project, by David Lynch? He went from the east coast to the west coast, interviewing people in apparently a very happenstance way. The interviews are short portraits of these people's lives. Collectively, they create a portrait of a country.
He's now doing a series, Interview Project Germany. The interviewees speak their dialect or local accent, but there are subtitles. Even if you do not like reading subtitles, please spend some time and reading them, for often what the people say is touchingly vulnerable and honest. What I like about these three interviews is the fact that the people live(d) modest lives, but seem genuinely happy with them.
Can you hear the difference between the way that Karl speaks and Luci? Luci comes out of ex-DDR. When the Berlin Wall went down over twenty years ago, the life she knew up to that date vanished. I was talking to a friend of mine recently about why it is that foreigners living in Germany don't say they are German, even after they have received citizenship. She responded with the fact that she feels she is a East Berliner and not a German. The area that she grew up in, the education she received, the social values she was raised in, they have changed or disappeared. This is not to say she is unhappy. Contrarily, like Luci, there is an acceptance mixed in with loss of that what they once held dear.
Then there is Betty, who talks about dressing up fashionably in the 60s and 70s. It's hard to imagine bellbottoms and hot pants. Friday night disco in the local bar. Yet, it is reassuring to know that she did live those moments.
The Offline Social Network (HUNGRY BEAST) (by abchungrybeast)
What I like about this video is how the whole concept of social media sites like Facebook really doesn't make much sense if you remove it from the online world and into IRL. The idea of poking and befriending and message wall... Strange. Recently, my family Facebook group announced the death of a relative on our Facebook wall. It doesn't appear that anyone but me felt this totally inappropriate.
Don't know if I mentioned my journey with Twitter... here's the short version. Joined. Found some people to follow. Was followed by some of them and few others. Basically didn't get it. Basically, thought I felt as if I was sitting underneath a waterfall of rushing information. This left me with a sensation of pressure building in my head. So, I quit. Walked away.
Journeyed on with no twitter, though lots of friends kept saying come back into the waters. Decided that rejection is not always the best consequence of critical thinking or social activism. So, I started to tweet again. This time, as a poet of modern haiku. If you wish, my twitter name is shortshortstori.
I have followers. Most who I do not know personally. It is a puzzle how they found me. It is also a delight.
Sometimes social media and the people on the forefront do something that is just fantastic. "It Gets Better" campaign is one such case. All the hot shots are doing it...
Even the geeks are on the bandwagon...
In my university days, studying electrical engineering, any gay engineering student had to hide his gayness. Not because they feared being ostracized, but physically beaten. "Gay bashing" was a weekend pastime of some of the more seriously homophobic tech students. Just love this Google employee's video contribution to the campaign.
But, my real hero when it comes to stirring up the dust is Rick Mercer. Please look at the following two videos. Don't you just love a good rant?
And, lastly, Rick Mercer and a group of famous Canadian media people and artists.
To all you out there to whom this message is directed to... find someone today to help you, and don't wait until tomorrow.
Wandering out into the garden in the early morning hours... to catch the threads of spider webs on my face, the drone of the bees amongst the apple blossoms, and the droplets of dew on the edge of my pantlegs.
Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve discusses the information contained in US government records made public (leaked) about the 779 prisoners of Guantánamo Bay. According to the records, over 80% of the people were completely innocent of those crimes they were suspected of. 606 people have already been acquitted and were known to have no intelligence of value for the government.
The purpose of Guantánamo Bay was/is intelligence gathering to prevent future attacks. He says that the problem is the US was trying to gather intelligence in a very unintelligent way,
“If you sweep people up who you know are innocent (and it is in these documents), and if you mistreat them horribly, then you are not going to get reliable intelligence; you are going to make yourself a lot of enemies.”
The reason he feels the US and everyone else needs to take a close look at what happened (and still is happening) at Guantánamo Bay is simply,
“You can’t learn the lessons of history, if you don’t know what that history is.”
One of the things that my mother and I used to disagree on when I was younger and Quebecois was how cats pyjamas the Brits are. She loved everything British. I less so.
Yet, the literature, the free London museums, and the Guardian has done much to make my views milder over the last years. But, it is Alys Fowler and her terrier (I believe called Isabel), who made me realise how Anglophilia is part craziness (in all the right ways), as it is a marrow transplant of fay. I love the fact that she looks incredibly elegant and happy in her garden, all the while having dirt under her fingernails.
If you wish to see more of Ms. Fowler's videos, do go... here.
