voice

Both Kate and Anna McGarrigle's homes are within about an hour of here. Today's poem, "voice", is prompted by Kate, who died yesterday of cancer at age 63.

Here is the Montreal Gazette article.

"What happened to the daily poems?" you ask.

You may have noticed that wordcurrents (A new poem every day . . . .) has had no new posts since Sunday January 10, 2010. Today is Thursday the 14th. What happened?

I got the 'flu.

Monday, I slept all morning. That afternoon, I practised with our quartet, Acapellics Anonymous, 2:30 to 4 pm at our home, waved goodbye, and suddenly felt so tired I had to lie down. By 6 pm I had a temperature, and the next few days blur into each other, as I slept most of the time.

Fortunately, we had no major snowstorms that needed shoveling, and the only social engagements I had were duplicate bridge and Barbershop practice, to both of which I sent regrets.

I had in the back of my mind that this was a chance to germinate some poetry seeds, but my brain refused to consider poetry. Last evening, my brain gave its consent to consider the concept, worked on a beginning for a poem about inability to work a poem while sick, but that went four lines in my head (still more or less there) and no further. It seems that writing requires something that sickness removes. Maybe science can use that observation to further investigate art.

When will I post again? Not yet. Later today? That seems unlikely: my impetus seems to me at this moment to be trapped within the leprotic hoary crust of a virulent joke.

The drive to the beach

I wrote this poem at the suggestion of Kathleen Hay, soon after St. Albert's Cheese opened its Facebook location, and everybody in the area was becoming a fan.

St. Alberts is one of the few remaining "cheese factories" in an area once famous for its cheeses. Our focal farm industry used to be dairy farms (raising mainly Holstein cattle). In the day, there were numerous of these "cheese factories" scattered around the area. My wife's uncle, Alex Cameron, made a cheddar that won the gold medal at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago. His cheese Factory was located in a frame house north west of Cornwall.

Virtually all of these cheese factories were forced to close over the last fifty years when, in a colossal blunder, the government of the day instituted a mandatory system of milk quota that restricted sale of milk to cheese producers who could obtain "quota" and drove up the price so much that the cheese factories could either no longer obtain milk or could no longer afford it, and all milk went to the single large producer, which soon had a monopoly, Kraft Foods.

St. Alberts was one of the few small producers to survive. Click on the photo to see the full size. One of St. Alberts staple products in curd. For a virtual tour of the manufacturing process, see virtual tour



The cheese curd has to be fresh, never refrigerated, as refrigeration changes the nature of the texture and taste. Fresh cheese curd is soft, moist and squeaky when you bite into it. It has a slightly salty taste. It comes almost white or coloured orange. It is this curd that is pressed into blocks and aged various lengths of time to become the revered cheddar that is a hallmark of the region.

One ray of hope: Margaret Morris' Glengarry Fine Cheese opened in 2009 just a couple of kilometers north of Lancaster Ontario. In the same building is Glengarry Cheesemaking, which teaches cheese making and sells supplies. Several varieties of Margaret's amazing cheeses are for sale at Farmboy in Cornwall. Of note is her Lankaaster, a fine Dutch Gouda. She also makes superb cheddars and cream cheeses amd blues. Well worth a twenty minute drive along the St. Lawrence River.