vacant lot

There is a progression in these photos. I will probably post more later as they build the new fibre-optic cable system centre. The poem pretty well says it all. Click on the title above to visit the poem on wordcurrents.

Spirrea time in the neighborbood

We have pink spirreas which will not be out for some time. These are out now, and really make a show. If the sun comes out before the rain bashes them down, I'll take some more sunny photos of them. All this, and lilacs, too!

Ellen Degeneres

[image copied from Wikipedia]

This article is a companion piece to the poem "MC", which I posted yesterday, in wordcurrents.

Ellen Degeneres' type of humour really appeals to me. While it is self-deprecating and seemingly self-conscious and even seemingly naive, it appears to come from a genuine joy. We all need that joy in our lives. While there is occasionally a bit of an edge to it, Degeneres offers the edge as a kind of devil-girl dare, like sticking out your tongue — for a moment, she shows her inner brat, and we like that. (Like her Oscar show cracks about the absent Dame Judi Dench's surgery.)
I used to like the "Ellen" show, and was sad to see how the industry dropped Ellen and her show so quickly when she perhaps naively declared her personal sexual preference, and it was not acceptable to the silly "moral majority"; it was as if she had been caught in a giant very public act of bigotry. Brava, Ellen, for overcoming such massive institutional cowardice and prejudice so completely and so bravely.
I genuinely liked Degeneres' hosting of the 79th Oscars, which I viewed with the sound off, for the most part, except when Degeneres and a few others were on camera. The erst of the time, I was writing, casting occasional glances at the TV.
I was pleased to see Ryan Gosling's sister, Mandi, on his arm at the awards. Mandi was a very talented student in the Program for the Arts Drama course I ran at CCVS in the last years of the teaching career. Ryan would have been in the program, but he became a member of the revived Mouseketeers before that could happen.

[Ryan and Mandi Gosling]

So, the Oscar held two pleasures for me: enjoying Ellen Degeneres and spotting Mandi on the red carpet. Cheers, Mandi!

My niche of the St. Lawrence River

Some nostalgia for better weather: here are some photos from October, taken the day we closed our cottage. I found them stored as a draft in my Blogger account, so: better late than never. I notice that my camera's optical sensor needs cleaning. Anyway, these sunny shots show our dock up on shore, and views around the island as we left. The white thing in the view of the shoreline is a crash wave roaring by the beach. It was caused by a passing freighter, as usual breaking the speed limit during the off-season. These waves cause serious shoreline erosion, but nobody really polices this issue. Another example of a wonderful resource being damaged in an atmosphere of apathy. Getting grim; better stop.

At last: not a white Christmas, but a pretty good Boxing day!

This was going to be a post about how we finally got snow today, and I have a picture to prove it:






However, there is another, more significant "at last": our daughter just gave birth (three weeks overdue) to her first child, a boy, 8 lb 2 oz. That was what we went out to Vancouver for, and missed. We are pleased that mother, son and father are all well. Here is a family photo:

slow show

I wrote this poem November 20, shortly before we left on our trip out west. That seems so long ago. I have revised it significantly form the original draft: the last line in particular has been a subject of some sport for me. The tree in question (see photo to the right) is the tallest in the centre of the city, some eighty feet, I estimate. It is much taller than it appears in the photo; I used auto stitch to join two photos of it that I took a few moments ago. note how the photo tapers at the top. The tree seemingly taller in the foreground to the right is actually considerable shorter, if you consder that I was shooting up at quite an angle for the top of this. In years that huge murders of crows flock to the centre of the city, they seem to focus over that tree, often filling its branches as prodigiously as the leaves. Local tree firms are hesitant to consider pruning it, so large and dangerously close to property is it. I wonder what the future holds?

Back at last!

I have not been able to log into this blog since about November 10, even though I had many things worth saying (which I have since forgotten, of course.)

We completed our very successful Barbershop concert last night, to raves. I wrote a poem about the day leading up to the concert, which I read at the traditional After Glow, when all the acts get up and perform again, for their peers after the show. I was asked to post it on our barbershop forum, which I did, although it is not available to the genral public, but I did also post it in wordcurrents. It is called "Water works". I have posted today's entry for wordcurrents (my 300th new poem posted there! yippee!). It is about the show and the After Glow, and is called "Barbershop's big night in Cornwall".

Just in case you are interested, our C-Way Sound Barbershop Chorus website (which I run) is at cwaysound.ca/

By the way, one of my earlier poetry posts this past week in wordcurrents, "cast X upon the waters", is attracting some fans in Zeugma poetry forum. It is about women's vote. It comes out of some comments Flora made about how some women don't vote, and how this ignores what women went through to get a vote. It is worth reading.

Back to work.

Rain, rain, rain . . . .

"It never rains but it pours" is a suitable motto for my present situation: not only is it almost perpetually raining, but I seem to go from one review to the next these days. At least, we are attending plays every few days it seems, and of course, I am reviewing them. As I write this, I am just finishing my review of Vagabond Theatre's production of David Belke's comedy That darn plot, which, except for some directorial choices and technical issues, I liked. Within the past couple of weeks, I posted reviews on GCTC's The Oxford Roofclimber's Rebellion by Stephen Massicotte (two days ago), and NAC's The Dream Machine by Blake Brooker. In just two more weeks, I shall be up to NAC for another play.

Our Barbershop Chorus' show, Daddy Sang Bass, in which I sing baritone (not being Daddy, I guess) hits the boards at Aultsville Theatre on November 18 at 8 pm. We are working for a sellout.

The deadline for my poetry entry in the CBC Literary Awards is fast approaching (November 1). I am still revising it. Fortunately, I can submit it by email, so a last minute submission is okay. The word length is 1000 - 2000 words, and I am coming in at 1546 at present. This is the kind of poem I like best: long. I cannot write more about it here until the judging is over, as the entries have to be submitted anonymously.

I have a conference by phone later today with my dramaturg for a murder script I am writing, and a script phone conference Tuesday with the MCs for the Barbershop show, for which I am also doing layout for the printed program.

It just keeps on raining showbiz.

Is Vagabond Theatre dying?

I was just speaking to my buddy, Bill Roddy, who is an accomplished actor, heavily involved in all aspects of theatre. Bill is currently a member of the cast of Vagabond Theatre's production of That Darned Plot by David Belke. He tells me that they have been playing to a handful of patrons each night.

In some ways this is a puzzling development; in other ways not. It is puzzling in that Vagabond Theatre has developed a loyal following over more than two decades. In a small city like Cornwall, that should count for something. It is not puzzling in that the venue for the play is much too large; any audience that does show up always comes away with a sense that the community is not really into this venture. Of course, there are two aspects to theatre production that affect theatre attendance, and they are almost totally unrelated: production quality and good old selling hustle. You can have all the quality in the world, but if you do not have the hustle, nobody will know you exist. I think that as far as Vagabond Theatre is concerned, they have not hustled. The same is true of many community ventures: you can't resent your audience for not showing up; you have to rethink the selling side of the venture and get some real hustlers out there pushing it.

It would be a shame to lose Vagabond Theatre, but, then, very few community theatre groups survive very long. We'll be there Saturday. I hope a lot of other people will, too.

Blue

This trip inspired "Blue"; as you can see, there is a lot of blue in the photo.



This is a view downstream (towards the north-east) at the head of Lake St. Francis in the St.Lawrence Seaway. To starboard is one of the green winter stick-buoys marking the south (Quebec) side of the channel. What a beautiful day this was. All of the land masses visible in this shot are islands. Below is an enlargement of the horizon, showing the little floating islands that really seem to inhabit a never-land between earth and sky.

Wet snow

Here is the photo of one of the scenes that inspired "Wet snow", the little poem that I just published in wordcurrents. We were driving home from an afternoon with friends, playing bridge, when the rain turned to snow. Back home, I took this photo with flash off the deck in our back yard. You can see the snow on the horizontal leaves. There is a fragility to this delicate scene; you can see why trees with leaves have to be deciduous in our climate.