"Igor is a chain-smoker; look where it got him!"

 One of the things I do on Hallowe'en is listen to the Spotify playlist I pulled together.  It's got my favourites: "Werewolves of London" (Warren Zevon), "Time Warp"(Rocky Horror Picture Show), "Skeleton" (Fionn) "Ghost" (Indigo Girls)....

All in all, about two hours of spooky music.

Of course, I have "Monster Mash", but that's only because Spotify doesn't have Bobby "Boris" Pickett's ghoulish (and rather more grammatically correct) take on a 1947 ditty penned by Merle Travis and Tex Williams:  "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke That Cigarette"

Well, thank goodness for YouTube.

Now, I'm a fellow with a heart of gold  

And the ways of a gentleman I've been told 

The kind of a person who wouldn't harm a flea 

But if I and a certain character met 

The man that created the cigarette 

I'd murder the so-and-so in the first degree

 

Not because I don't smoke myself 

And I don't suppose they'll harm my health 

I've smoked all my life and I'm not dead yet 

But you nicotine slaves look a little more pale 

Each time you light up a coffin nail

Go ahead, have another cigarette 

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette 

(Go on, take a puff!)

Puff, puff, puff 

And if you smoke yourself to death 

Tell St Peter at the Golden Gate 

That you hate to make him wait 

But you've just got to have another cigarette

The other night, I had a date

with the cutest little girl in the fifty states,

A high-grade, uptown, fancy graveyard pet

I gave her a kiss and a little squeeze,

And she said, "Boris, excuse me please,

I've just got to have another cigarette!"

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette

(Dig your own grave.)

Sweet dreams.

Jack o'lantern jazz: freestyle, old-school, fusion, and bebop

I spent part of this morning test-driving jack o'lanterns.

 I already knew that mine would need a tilt. I'm the only family member who used a stencil this year. It's not as easy as you might think. I also decided I wanted to try peeling this year; allowing the light to shine though the exposed flesh of the pumpkin. (This is not as creepy as it sounds.)  

Note to self:  the stencil needs to be taped closer to the lid, so that the image doesn't disappear down under.

The Resident Fan Boy went old-school - suitable for scaring off evil spirits.

Demeter free-styled a sun-burst for a flash of brilliance.

And younger daughter has been focussing on the fantasy/horror series Stranger Things. She was mortified to have forgotten the "R", but I think the addition is in keeping with the storyline of children astray and missing -- something, I hasten to add, we do not wish for any trick-or-treaters tomorrow night.  

May the lights guide them home safely.

The early worms get the bird

One of several jump-starters on Linden Avenue

Oh, I had plans for today.

Never mind.  Things happen. I'll spare you.

I think the neighbourhood might be pretty excited about Hallowe'en this year.  Even in Hades, people waited until the Thanksgiving weekend to put up Hallowe'en displays.

Not in Victoria this year!  The spiderwebs and clutching skeletal hands started emerging in early October.

If our neighbours are this eager, I think it may be prudent to take the jack o' lanterns in early on Sunday.

And draw the blinds...

Passing by on the same side

It was the toppled tall planter that first caught my eye.

I was walking into Cook Street Village, and passing a pizza shop, which does steady business most evenings, despite the fact that their food is rather awful, which is not relevant.

It was quite early in the morning, and the shop was shut.  As I strode by, I caught sight of the planter lying on its side, the soil spilling out, and the plant flat against the pavement.  It took a split second for my eye to register that someone was beside the plant, seated on the edge of the patio.

He appeared to be asleep.  Clad in a camouflage hoodie, he was bent double across his knees, like a jackknife.  There was a golden retriever lying next to him, alert and calm.

Although slightly taken aback, I thought little of it, until I retraced my steps about an hour later -- and the man was still there, in the exact same position.  The dog apparently hadn't moved either, paws folded, he or she gazed off into the middle distance, paying no attention to me, as I paused uncertainly.

I had an unsettling experience trying to intervene for benevolent reasons, about ten years ago. I started walking again, recalling the incident, and wondering if any action should be taken here.  The dog was a consideration.  If something were wrong (aside from a man sleeping in a jackknife position on the street first thing in the morning), wouldn't the dog be agitated or distressed?  Whom would I call?  Would they take the dog?

I continued up the hill, unsettled, on my way to give Demeter her breakfast.  The day, as it does, swept me away.  

Later, I passed the pizza shop, and there was no sign of him.  The planter was righted, the patio swept clean.

An angel whispered trick or treat

The neighbourhood started oozing Hallowe'en decorations before Thanksgiving.  I think everyone is eager to have a real Hallowe'en, although you hear of scaredy-cats who don't want to shell out this year either.

Much as "Boxing Day" has been highjacked into "Boxing Week", or even "Boxing Month" by the merchants, I've been hearing the phrase "Hallowe'en Week".

Well, I'm prepping the pumpkins today, so I might as well get into the mood.  I didn't hear this 1992 Hallowe'en tune by Richard Shindell until a couple of years ago.  It combines the bitterness of a busted up love affair with dreamlike and nightmarish aspects of All Hallows Eve.  

It's a toe-tapper.

You took the toaster when you went 

You never paid your half the rent 

You took the spices from the rack 

But you don't have to put 'em back 

'Cause in your haste on Halloween 

You left your camera on the bed 

Where we played roles in black and white 

You left a roll of black and white 

I set the timer and thought of you 

And put the lens up to my head 

I took a photograph for you 

What comes out grey is really red 

Are you happy now? 

I smashed your pumpkin on the floor 

The candle flickered at my feet 

As goblins flew across the moon 

The children peered into the room 

A cowboy shivered on the porch 

As Cinderella checked her watch 

A hobo waited in the street 

An angel whispered trick-or-treat 

But what was I supposed to do 

But to sit there in the dark? 

I was amazed to think that you 

Could take the candy with you too  

So, are you happy now? 

I've sat all night and now it's dawn 

And I cannot believe my eyes 

There's garbage strewn across the lawn 

Where we once stared up at the sky 

And streams of paper fill the tree 

That hovered over you and me 

Shaving cream covers the car 

That we picked up in Baltimore 

Though I know it's hard to tell 

I hope that what's-his-name treats you well 

I still maintain that he's a bum 

But it's your money – have some fun 

And are you happy now? 

You always asked why I had not 

Written you a verse or two 

Since that's the one thing I regret 

I dedicate this one to you 

So, are you happy now? 

Are you?

The truth of the matter

I'm working at the computer when I hear an unfamiliar familiar sound.

It's the strange dropping swoop of a Facebook Messenger notification.  Years ago, I read on a internet security blog that it's unwise to have a Facebook Messenger app, due to the fact that you have to allow it an alarming amount of access to your personal information.

This means I can only access Facebook Messenger from my computer or laptop.  It also means that if I'm being contacted this way, it's usually someone who doesn't know me well enough to have my email address or my phone number.

Glancing at the name, my heart sinks just a little.  It's someone from my high school, who only gets in touch when a) she's planning a high school reunion; or b) she's lost track of someone she really wants to talk to -- I have a reputation for knowing where people are. 

It's a bit of both.  I supply her with an address, and she politely expresses the hope I'll be able to come.  I am courteously noncommittal.

"I don't know if you know," she texts, "but Buck Rogan died."

I did, of course.  As I've mentioned, I know where people are.  Buck is, presumably, in heaven.  

I've cudgelled my brain, but I have no memories of him, although I remember him.  He was one of the jocks, and I don't recall his saying a word to me.  

That's okay.  His obituary has a reasonably long list on online tributes, as is usual with one who dies before his time.  Clearly those who mattered to him, and to whom he mattered, are grieving.

I've kept in touch with those who matter to me.  I trust I matter to them as well -- although I may be mistaken.

This is the reason I don't go to high school reunions anymore.  I don't tell my correspondent that, because it might sound as if I don't care.  I wish I didn't -- which is also why I won't be going.

Pavement pinwheel

I went to bed last night with the news that ferry service has been cancelled for Vancouver Island, which is bad news for those on the Gulf Islands who have lost power. Crews can't get to them until the ferries are running again. 

It's not that bad here in Victoria. 

I saw little in the way of tossing trees from my bedroom window this morning, but from Fairfield Road, I can see the tops of the ancient towers of plane trees tossing. 

Chester Street, as is usual in windy weather, is littered with little grey fingers of blown away twigs with the occasionally chestnut -- blown from Cook Street? 

Lower down, the sidewalk is ankle deep in the the leaves placed in careful piles a couple of days ago, now scattered to the four winds. Well, one wind, anyway. 

I see work crews on the main roads at the rather futile task of blowing leaves back into piles. I hear leaf-blowers are being outlawed in California. 

High time.

On my way home, my eye is caught by a brilliant leafy pinwheel, waiting on the sidewalk for the next powerful gust.

Accio, mask

Today, it is the fourth anniversary of our flight from Hades.  Three time zones away, elder daughter, having attended a thrice-postponed wedding, is leaving Ottawa herself, returning to her new life in London.

As is my practice, when I find myself masked, distanced, and at the head of the line at the coffee shop, I turn to ask the person behind me if I might slip in, drop my packsack on a table, and resume my place.

This morning, it's a rather dapper gentleman.

"Do you happen to have a mask?" he inquires.  "I seem to have dropped mine somewhere on the way here; I had it when I left home..."

"I keep a spare in my packsack," I say.  "Give me a moment."

I plop my packsack on the table, and paw through one of the side pockets, before returning to the door, with the mask dangling by its long strings. It's a double tie design, purchased early in the pandemic.

"Make sure Harry Potter is right-side-up," I advise with an apologetic air.  He fastens it cheerfully over his neat moustache.  It looks a bit incongruous with his impeccable navy raincoat.

"I like your mask!" I hear one of the baristas greet him.  Fortunately, she has the disposable kind on hand, and I think he and I are equally relieved when I reclaim Harry Potter.

After all, I need him for Hallowe'en.

Calm before the storm

 

That's a streetlight, not the sun

I wake up from the beginnings of a nightmare, and remember that when I went to bed, there were dire warnings of a "weather bomb", a "cyclone bomb", according to American meteorologists - a storm not seen on the west coast in ages, if at all.  Talk of hurricane force winds, possibly the speeds of a Category Three.

I was in Halifax eleven years ago, when Hurricane Earl, a Category One hurricane, eased into being merely a tropical storm.  I decided then that if that was a Category One, I wouldn't care to experience anything stronger.

I head out at daybreak, when it's beginning to rain, but before I put up my umbrella, I whip out my phone to capture Chester Street and my beloved arch of ancient plane trees, which, like all other trees, have been severely depleted and weakened by the dryness and heat of the spring and summer this year.  What will this wind do to them?

Canadian meteorologists are being comforting, saying there's a good chance that the storm will ease as it reaches the northern end of Vancouver Island.  Vancouver Island is a very large and long island, but we, at the southern tip, can still be affected, if only in our internet.

At dinnertime, I'm returning home down Vancouver Street from downtown Victoria, walking through my hushed neighbourhood.  It's as if the world is holding its breath.

Taking thrills where you can get them

I'm taking in an extra loop of the neighbourhood, to get in a bit of exercise before going to get Demeter's dinner.  A neighbour from down the hall in our building, spots me and scurries across the road to approach me.

"Are you on your way to Roots Cellar?" she inquires eagerly.

Roots Cellar is a local grocer specializing in local produce and "nutritious food and healthy lifestyle choices". It is, as you can imagine, rather upscale and very middle-class, despite its claims for being "dirt cheap".  The business is expanding, and has just opened its second store in Victoria, after a long wait of nearly a year.  The selling point, in addition to what has already been mentioned, is in supporting local businesses and producers, which is not to be sniffed at.

It's been a long year without a local grocery.  The small and even more specialized organic food store appeals to a very narrow (and comfortably off) vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free clientele.  

When we lived in Fairfield in the nineties, there were two supermarkets in Cook Street Village, both doing steady business for years.  The Country Grocer closed down in the aughts, replaced by (of course) expensive condos.  Oxford Foods (named because it was on the corner of Oxford Street) soldiered on in its grungy glory, featuring the kind of items prized by pensioners, of whom there are a lot in our neighbourhood: packaged foods, canned foods, cleaning products... Their produce was serviceable, but not all that fresh, and mostly imported. The owners decided to retire and sell to the younger couple who runs the original Roots Cellar.

As it happened, I told my eager neighbour, I had popped into Roots Cellar early that morning, securing a Bosc pear for Demeter (one of her favourites) and having a quick look around at dazzling stacks of every kind of fruit and vegetable imaginable, up to and including jackfruit and pineapples.

If you're in the market for dairy products (see what I did there?), you're in luck: wide varieties of yoghurts, milks, sour cream, and whipping cream in many forms, to say nothing of a huge selection of cheeses.  There's a meat counter and a deli counter, and many options for meat substitutes.  A small display of ice creams, a modest bakery and baking section.  No boxed cake blends (small bags, though, of more local mixes).  Absolutely no paper products, or cleaning aids. If you want cereal, you go to the bulk bins for rolled oats or granola. Very West Coast.

So, no one-stop shopping, but an easily accessible place for staples such as eggs, milk, or fruit.  It's been more than nine months since Demeter's fall, and my being able to quickly replace supplies will be a welcome change from making do with what I can find in convenience stores.

Our condo building was positively buzzing with giddiness.  Over a grocery store. 

The Resident Fan Boy, trying to transport a heavy basket to the laundry rooms upstairs, encountered neighbour after neighbour, unseen for months, using the elevator to get to the sidewalks and join the pilgrimage.  

Is this touching or pathetic?

It's really hard to hate anyone when you know what they've lived through

 I had my flu shot today. It's a doozy. It's driven me briefly to my bed.

This song by Dawes was released in 2018, deep in the midst of Trump's America, but it's about more than that. A perfect state of grace is difficult to achieve in the best of times.

Or the worst of times. 

Relief grief

I was watching a documentary about Rita Moreno recently.

Filmed in 2018, at the time when she was celebrating her 87th birthday -  I should look so good now - we see her preparing to film an episode of the updated Latino version of the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time.  She's breakfasting in her dressing room, watching the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings.

This is pertinent, because Moreno, as a very pretty, very young woman in 1950s Hollywood, experienced more than her share of sexual harassment, even violence.  This was, of course, considered a normal way for men to interact with women at the time, so the narrative wasn't a shock so much as a weary recognition.

What was a shock was the revelation at the end of the film, as Moreno reflects on her forty-eight-year marriage to Leonard Gordon, who died in 2010.  We'd just seen a series of images and films that seem to demonstrate the playful nature of their relationship, and heard her daughter and a family friend affectionately recalling their memories of the couple.

Then, the camera rests on Moreno, who pauses, and declares:  "No."

It was not a successful marriage, she tells us.  He was controlling.  I should have ended it sooner.  Yes, he was funny. Yes, he loved me.  Yes, he gave me my daughter.

She's asked if she felt relief when he died.

Long pause.

"Say 'no'," I found myself inwardly pleading.

The answer is yes.

Afterwards, I wondered why I didn't want her to feel relieved.

I think it's because I have experienced, not often, but more than once, the awkwardness of being a person officially in mourning for someone neither loved nor liked.  It is grief, please understand: grief for those I love who do feel the loss, and grief for that which had gone past repair years ago.

And that comfortable/uncomfortable paradox: relief.    

I hope my passing is mourned, not incessantly, but sincerely, and I especially hope that no one is relieved.  I don't know how realistic that is.                                                 

Listed but obsure

I was speaking yesterday of where my mind wanders while engaged in genealogical gate-keeping.  Sometimes I wind up in the company of long-dead great-aunts.

Inexperienced family researchers - I'm not claiming to be an expert genealogist, but I do have some experience - make the mistake of ignoring the "lateral" relatives, ie. aunts and uncles, especially those who, for whatever reason, didn't have children.

I can say to you without reservation, that childless aunts and uncles can be a goldmine to a family researcher.  They tend to take in struggling nieces and nephews, and mention them in wills, describing how they're related and who their parents are.

I'd like to tell you a bit about the Resident Fan Boy's great-aunt.  Up until a couple a weeks ago, I knew that she was born in Folkestone, Kent in 1878, and died in Montreal in 1948.  Brought up in the Church of England, she became the wife of a widowed Methodist minister (also British-born), who went on to become an advocate for prison reform in Canada, and was instrumental in promoting British immigration in Canada after the second World War.

About three years ago, I came across a scrapbook maintained by my late mother-in-law, which, by some miracle, had not been thrown away by the Resident Fan Boy.  It contained momentos of her various family members, particularly her aunts and uncles, and included a 1940s news clipping mentioning the great-aunt (in an article about her husband, of course), which mentioned her being a "well-known artist".

So it was, that a couple of weeks ago, my mind wandering, it occurred to me to try Googling.  I didn't have high hopes of a hit, but entered her full married name, and the word "artist". To my startlement and absolute delight, a website called worthpoint.com appeared, with a picture of one of her paintings!

It's an "oil on glass", painted in 1943. The website describes the great-aunt as "obscure but listed". (A bit of a comedown from "well-known" but it's been more than seventy years since she died.)  The web site does say she exhibited at the Art Association of Montreal in the 1930s, and sold a number of paintings, some for "a rather high price". Do I detect thinly veiled surprise?

Included are notes, apparently from the artist herself: "Kept 'lily' alive for a month in aspirin + water.frogs were in pond. Mr. Quesher, the curator, allowed me to take the lily from pond." (This was apparently at the Montreal Botanical Gardens.)

In a fit of excitement, I posted my findings on Facebook for the delight of the Resident Fan Boy's cousins -- and was met with polite approbation.

"Well, Mum," said elder daughter later, during our weekly Skype visit, "It's not like it was a fabulous painting..."  

And she was a long dead great-aunt, who had no kids, but judging from what little was said of her, mostly in relation to her husband, led a useful life of church work and social work, with a notable degree of creativity.  The last nibling with any memory of her died in 2013.

So I throw out a kind of lifeline, pulling these almost-forgotten women from the currents of passing time. It's kind of our calling, we genealogists, because family history is not just for the famous, the notorious, and those who had children.

My great-aunt's twenty-day marriage

This is a tale of two great-aunts.  One is mine; one is the Resident Fan Boy's. I'll tell you the tale of my great-aunt first -- although, in this case, it's more about her husband.  Not because he was more important or interesting, but because I'd never thought much about him -- until last week.

Ever since testing Demeter's DNA at Ancestry a little over a year ago, I've been working through hundreds of matches, labeling whether they are paternal or maternal, and, if possible, to which branch they belong. 

It's not boring work, but, the smaller the number of centiMorgans shared, the more likely it is that there are few clues to connections. Sometimes my mind wanders.

Last week, as I marked and noted, I found myself thinking about my great-aunt, who was swept away in the final wave of the great influenza pandemic.  She died on February 19, 1919 in Wolverhampton, at age 26, struggling to speak to her husband of six months.

It occurred to me that I didn't know when her widower died.  All I really knew about him was that he was an army driver during World War One, and that, some time after losing his wife, he asked my grandmother, who was eight years her sister's junior, to marry him.  She turned him down.  (Obviously.)  However, his name remained in her address book for at least the next decade.

I set about trying to find his death registration, but his name wasn't unusual, and there are several registrations for men bearing his name sharing his birth year, or thereabouts.

I found him in the 1891 census and narrowed down his birthdate to late February 1891, as he was noted as being six weeks old when the census was taken on April 5th.  He was the only son, with many sisters, raised in Wolverhampton, as my grandmother and her siblings were.

I found a possible second marriage for him.  My grandmother's address book, a birthday gift when she turned 19, ten months after her sister's death, has him first in Coventry, Warwickshire, then later in Newcastle-on-Tyne, as a manager for Daimler.  The 1939 National Register, taken just after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, has a fellow born in late February 1891, a manager for a motor company, with his wife -- whose given names match those for a marriage registered in Coventry, a little over a year after my great-aunt's death.  The wife would have been almost the exact age of my grandmother.

However, the wife didn't have an unusual name either, so finding a death record was as daunting as locating one for her husband.

Before giving up, it occurred to me to double-check his World War One military record.  I don't think I'd given it more than a glance.

As I'd mentioned, he was a driver for the army, signing up shortly after the declaration of war in 1914 -- in Coventry, as it happens.  His army documents gave me a date of marriage, and it was different than what I had in my records:  11 July 1918 at St Jude Wolverhampton, my great-grandparents' parish church at the time.

I checked the dates of his postings.  He had been given a furlough in order to be married, and returned to France ten days after the wedding, so the wedding date in his military record is the correct one.  

He didn't return to Wolverhampton until nearly three months after the war ended.  He left France on February 9th, 1919 -- ten days later, his bride died of influenza.

Out of six months of marriage, they had been together barely twenty days.  (Oh gawd.  Did he bring the contagion with him?)

I'll tell you the tale of the Resident Fan Boy's great-aunt tomorrow.

Animated graveyards -- shudder

I like family history. 

I also rather like Hallowe'en. 

What do the two have in common? 

Graveyards. 

This is a charming animated chronicle of cemeteries, which may be a shade oxymoronic. It even had some things that I didn't know, e.g. that burial wasn't always an honourable treatment of the dead.

There appear to be links to other related features, possibly by the same creators. I'll have to check them out, when I have some copious free time, which may take a while.

Evocations of COVID

I've been checking my 2018, 2019, and 2020 journals to see what I was doing in mid-October in various years.  

It's been very instructive.  For one thing, I realised with a start, that in the past three mid-Octobers,  I had already begun addressing Christmas cards.  (So I started.)

I also realised that, at this time last year, my cousins caught COVID.

In a cruel twist of irony, elder daughter was exposed because she was in quarantine.  She had gone straight  from Heathrow to my cousins' home in Wiltshire, where she was isolated in a self-contained bedroom belonging to one of her second cousins, who was miles away, attending university.

Unfortunately, the other second cousin was attending secondary school, and he brought the virus home with him.  (This was long before vaccines became available.) First, we heard my cousin's wife had been troubled with migraines.  Next, elder daughter reported that her teenaged second cousin had "a cold".  Our hearts sank.  Nobody was getting colds any more.

The second cousin at university urged his parents and brother to get tested.  All three of them had COVID.  Five days later, elder daughter FaceTimed me to tell me that her senses of smell and taste had vanished.  

We were terrified and helpless, eight time zones away.  As it turned out, all four had completely different symptoms, and all four recovered within days, although they were locked down for longer.  The secondary school, as you can imagine, was thrown into turmoil, as the younger second cousin's classmates were isolated and quarantined themselves.

We didn't tell anyone but close friends and family.  As it was, cousins on both sides of the Atlantic had weighed in with their opinions on elder daughter's move to the UK.  The most vocal of the dissenting cousins have no children themselves, and seemed to forget that elder daughter is a fully fledged adult.

And besides, this hadn't been her fault.  She had followed protocols to the letter.

Today, elder daughter returned to Canadian soil for the first time in over a year, in order to attend a friend's wedding.  The ceremony has been postponed three times.

COVID touches and smears everything.

 

Being seen

I may have mentioned that, as I navigated my way around during my seventeen long years in Hades, strangers rarely addressed me.  

This was probably due to two factors:  1) Ontarians are a bit on the reserved side; 2) I was female and over forty.  I noticed, with some amusement, that, when I was walking somewhere with either daughter,  men, particularly fellows of my vintage or older, would approach and ask directions of my daughter, rather like I wasn't there.

As I've also mentioned, people in Victoria do talk to me, even young men, who, on the whole, greet me cordially. It's not deep, but it's pleasant.  I feel visible again.

When I go to the coffee shop, I'm still visible, but, because I have journals and pens spread across the table, I'm rarely approached.  I'm occasionally asked if I'm a writer, and I issue a brief and (I hope) polite denial, knowing that there are actual writers within hearing.

I arrive fairly early in the morning, when most of the clientele are male.  They enjoy calling pleasantries and questions to the baristas. The young women respond warmly, never letting on that most of these fellows are the same age as their fathers and grandfathers.  It's harmless.

Over to my left, three Billy Connolly clones are gathered around a table, chatting amiably about tools and rat infestations - a hazard of living in Victoria. None of them have Scottish accents.

The real Billy Connolly

Across the way, a young fellow with a beard is interacting with his laptop, a Bluetooth glowing in his ear, luckily for us -- and him. I think people who watch sports, television programmes, or gawd help us, music videos without earbuds in coffee shops should be strung up.  Or do you think I'm being too harsh?

Tight in a corner, a middle-aged guy is talking to a woman.  It might be a date, or a meeting.  He's describing his career, using words like "passionate" and "balance" which seem to be the early 21's century's versions of "meaningful".  She's not saying much.  To give him his due, he does ask her the occasional question.

Over to my right, a stranger clad in a woollen poncho greets me cheerily and volubly, somewhat to my confusion.  (This never happened in Hades: the greeting from a stranger - especially to a non-youthful non-barista - or the poncho.)  He's from Saltspring Island, which I could have guessed. It turns out the reason he's calling over to me if that he thought he heard me tell the staff that I'm from Saltspring.

'I don't think so," I tell him.  "Because I'm not!"

He thinks this is funny.  Very chatty.  Very Saltpringy.  He's feeling homesick, he says.

I tell him about my husband's birthday, and he says it makes him happy when older people celebrate birthdays, "because they've worked harder for it".  He could take a page from the baristas' diplomatic code, but I take no offence when none is intended.  

"It's actually pretty simple," I smile.  "You don't die."

He thinks that's pretty funny, too.  Give him time.

Your head will collapse, but there's nothing in it

 A couple of months ago, we took a deep breath and booked tickets for a concert next spring.

Barring fresh horrors, Postmodern Jukebox is coming to Victoria, about the time of younger daughter's birthday, so we've splashed out and purchased tickets near the front this time.

Shortly after we did this, PMJ started making videos again.  Today, I was intrigued by their latest, in which they reimagine the Pixies' drug-addled "Where Is My Mind" (weren't all Pixie songs a bit spaced out?) as something Roy Orbison might have performed in the early sixties.  

Instead of a rather homely and nearsighted unlikely (and rather operatic) rock star, we get a Titian-haired young woman with creamy skin, singing the decidedly odd lyrics to a string quartet and a jazz quartet.

 

I actually rather like the Pixies, but this is not one of my favourites. As usual, PMJ makes the song engaging without losing any of the impact and downright weirdness.

Update:  Several Facebook followers of PMJ are commenting that this isn't like Roy Orbison at all.  I think the spooky other-worldliness is certainly in the Orbison camp, and this video reminds me of the video for  "She's a Mystery to Me", a song Bono of U2 penned for Orbison in the 1980s, which Orbison recorded shortly before his death in late 1988.

I talk to the trees...

 

As we slip past Thanksgiving into the weeks preceding Hallowe'en, it becomes darker in the morning.  The sun is still hiding behind the horizon, as I set out in the half-light, and I'm a little startled to spot my shadow -- until I realize that the streetlights are still on.

The side street where I make my first turn has become a dim tunnel formed by the arches of the ancient shade trees standing sentinel on either side; they whisper silkily, as the hummingbirds click far above my head.  These will be the last trees to change colour, usually in early to mid-November.

Our native trees, the arbutus and Garry Oak, have been suffering for a while, but this past summer, the longer than usual drought and the truly alarming heat dome that struck us in mid-June, have taken their toll on all our shade-givers, particularly the older ones -- and we have lots of really old trees in our neighbourhood.

Experts say that the Pacific gales, which should be starting up soon, will cause extra damage this year to the weakened evergreens, oak, maple, and chestnuts.

"Are you okay?" I murmur to one enormous twisted trunk as I pass.

No reply.  Just the hiss of the morning wind in the leaves.

Sidelines

For the past year, the powers-that-be have been digging up Cook Street.   

I don't have a problem with that, being a pedestrian who is all in favour of infrastructure. 

However, even pedestrians are affected by the noise -- and the number of cyclists on the sidewalk. 

From my seat by the dividing wall on the coffee shop patio early one lovely, if noisy morning, I watch as a tandem bike bearing a father and his young school-bound daughter whizzes by, way too fast for sidewalk-sharing.

From the other direction, a fully helmeted woman cycles up the sidewalk at a rather impolitic speed. She stops suddenly at the front steps of the coffee house, and, straddling her bike,  expertly fires a rolled up newspaper through the open door.

I congratulate her, and she tells me that she had two flat tires this morning, which is why she's late.  (I'm late, too; it's bed linen day.) She says she made the discovery in the early morning dark of the "bike room".  Fortunately, she's a dab hand at tire-changing.

She spreads her arms.  "But I get to ride in this! It's all good!"

And she takes off.  

On the sidewalk.

From away

The neighbourhood is lousy with campervans.

They're parked up and down the residential streets, usually clustered around condo buildings.

Early Saturday morning, I marvelled at the number of people trotting up and down Cook Street, then I noticed the strolling people were in groups, and  I remembered.  It's the Thanksgiving long weekend.  Furthermore, it's our second pandemic Thanksgiving, and visiting rules are way looser than last year's rather bleak excuse for a holiday, so the ferries are full, and families are getting together with a vengeance.  Well, maybe that's the wrong word.  (Let's hope so, anyway.)

Our Thanksgiving will be the usual quiet matter, as all family coming to dinner, either live here, or barely a block away.  Pumpkin pie made by me and dinner rolls made by younger daughter.  Demeter escorted in from her own condo to dine on roast chicken -- we don't care much for turkey.  Or campervans.

Wishing you a peaceful meal, free of feuds and super-spreaders, followed by a safe journey home.

Almost afraid to go home

 Gotta get to bed.  It's Thanksgiving tomorrow, and there are pies to bake and people to support.

Here's a song I like.  Just for a change, it's only about six years old.

It's going to take a few listenings to work out what the lyrics mean -- to me, anyway.

Reasons for loving October

 

Yesterday, I was musing (and whining just a bit) about sad Octobers, but I was reminded yesterday evening why I love the month. 

Nearing the end of a brisk and beautiful day, so I took some brisk steps down the hill, where I was reminded that, although Victoria can't match the autumn palette in Hades, we don't do too shabbily in fall colours.

And our autumn lasts longer than two weeks.

As I headed back up the hill, I saw and heard something I haven't heard for over two years:  musicians at one of the coffee houses.

Stuck like a dope with a thing called hope.

Why must you go and make this decision alone?

Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) has haunted me through the seasons, but mainly in autumn. 

Eleven years ago, I saw elder daughter off to university and his song "Oh, Very Young" nearly did me in.

Later, as school became more of a trial to younger daughter, "Don't Be Shy", the song that opens the film Harold and Maude, became my prayer for her.

One year ago in early October, after nearly six months of sheltering with us from the pandemic, elder daughter left Victoria, stopped in Ottawa at a friend's empty condo to pick up her things, then flew to England.  She had given notice on her Ottawa job a few days after the death of the Accent Snob in October 2019, planning to fly to the United Kingdom the following spring, in pursuit of a long-cherished dream: to live and work in London.

Then the pandemic hit, and she came to us instead.  Not so secretly, I was thrilled to have my family members close and safe.

Elder daughter, however, was itching to go.  She continued to work online at her own job, after negotiating a contract, but, as the months passed, she wanted desperately to make the break for which she'd planned and planned, especially as her work visa for the UK was sifting away like sand in an hourglass.

Finally, unable to bear it, she purchased plane tickets.

The morning of her departure, I awoke at 2:40 am, when the Resident Fan Boy and elder daughter had been up for about forty minutes.  I lay quietly until 3:15 am, remembering the long-ago October crack of dawn, when my father departed for the final time.  I had written a tearfully detailed entry in my diary, then, not much later, meticulously blocked and blotted out every line, unable to bear having the record of my preteen grief.

Back in the present, I rose and cleaned myself up a little bit, putting in eye drops, then carefully drying, lest elder daughter think I'd been weeping.

I found her perched tensely on "her" end of the couch, claimed during her not-quite-six-month stay with us.

"Dad," she murmured.  "Please call the cab."

The Resident Fan Boy returned shortly after 5 am.  COVID protocols had barred him from waiting at the airport.  He curled up on the bed and wept heartbrokenly.

I rose and headed for the coffee shop, feeling as if the earth was pushing back on the soles of my feet, and I just had enough strength to push back.

I sat at the table, looking out at the sun beginning to hit the tops of the trees, and Cat Stevens pounced, with a song I've heard for years, with lyrics that now stuck into me like nails.

And, finally, I began to weep.

But, you know, I've been a mother for a while now.  I can weep silently, my body still.

Nobody noticed.

I always thought I liked October.  Maybe stuff like this would be worse in an unkinder month.

A part of the main?

An October sunset in Fairfield

 I am diminished. 

A cousin in Wales contacted me through Facebook to tell me that a mutual cousin - his first, my second - has died, seemingly suddenly, not far from me, leaving her husband, her aged mother, and her sister. I'm not sure of her age, except that she was younger than me. 

While checking around for more information, I stumbled across the recent obituary of a Friend (she was a lifelong Quaker) who slipped away a couple of weeks ago. I haven't seen her in years, and have just learned that she lived a matter of blocks away.

I may not be an island, but the circumstances of the past few years certainly have succeeded in isolating me.

Strange fruit

I decided to take a longer route home after Demeter's dinner call, because the evening was temperate, autumnal, and glowing. 

As the light began to leave the sky, and I was a block from home, I passed by a red dress swinging from a tree. 

Red Dress Day is supposed to be May 5th, but in the week following Orange Shirt Day, there have been demonstrations about the legion of missing Indigenous women across Canada.

Colder.  Darker.  My jacket was red, too, and I pulled it closer around me, and quickened my pace.

A pounce of cure (well, Queen, actually)

How many cat videos do you suppose there are out there?  Millions? Billions?

How many parodies and/or humorous takes on "Bohemian Rhapsody"?  Hundreds?  Thousands?

I'm taking a chance that there aren't many videos combining the two, but I won't place any bets.

It's pretty accurate. (Although, our cat, being an indoor cat, doesn't hide trophies in the bed.)

Desert Dream

Nope. Tired. I might just let this lull me to sleep. But before I go, I think I should mention:

 1) that this song is at least eight years old (because I am never ahead of anything); 

2) that Bombino is Omara Moctar, a Nigerian musician of the Tuareg people; 

3) and that he's singing in Tafinagh, so if you'd like to know what this song is about, this video provides subtitles and translations. G'night.

And Andrei isn't here

I'm listening to music one morning, while going about my business, when I find myself stopping to focus.

A beautiful baritone voice sings slowly, and repetitively: There's a war going on somewhere out there -- and Andrei isn't here.  

What?  What on earth is this?

 

 The baritone is joined by a full chorus, singing in close harmony. They start adding names, and adjectives. It's clearly a cumulative song, like the songs you sing at Christmas time (Twelve Days of Christmas; Must Be Santa), in kindergarten and primary grades (I Know an Old Lady), or around the campfire.  They work as drinking songs, too.  

This one has a real drinking song vibe.

. . .Anatole is hot

Marya is old-school

Sonya is good

Natasha is young

And Andrei isn't here!

Every now and then, the chorus explains:  This is all in your programme.  You are at the opera.  You're gonna have to study up a little bit, if you want to follow the plot, 'cause it's a complicated Russian novel; everyone has nine different names, so look it up in your programme, we'd appreciate it; thanks a lot!

And I'm thinking: They got that right!

I tried reading The Brothers Kamarazov once, because I love the Parable of the Grand Inquisitor.  It's true, I couldn't keep track of anyone.  Every time they were addressed by someone different, their names changed.

The chorus breaks the cumulative bit to sing exuberantly:  Chandeliers and cavier - the war can't touch us here! before resuming, in fully layered harmony: MINOOOOOR CHARACTERS!

Okay, what is this? I wonder, finally going to the computer screen.  It's Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, which, as it happens, I have heard of, because I've seen excerpts on television.  I thought it was about some sort of astronomer.

The chorus is reaching the end of the number, which turns out to be the "Prologue", and they sing plaintively:  What about Pierre? Rich, unhappily married Pierre?

Wait a minute.  Is this War and Peace?

It is.  A tiny bit of War and Peace.  The part where Andrei wasn't there.

Before you get impressed that I recognised it - and if you're not impressed, please don't tell me - let me assure you that this is only because, when the pandemic was really getting underway, I decided to binge-watch the 2016 television version - which does try to cover the whole novel. I mainly remember the bit about Pierre being miserable.

Intrigued, I decided to continue listening, and frankly, the Prologue is the best part.  (Rather like the fact that you can safely stop watching A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum after "Comedy Tonight".) 

Although the final few minutes, with the comet, are wistful and lilting.  Not a bad way to go out.

(The baritone is Josh Groban.)

Fly fly away

Fly Fly Fly - Alex Janvier (1981)

A couple of days ago, we had Orange Shirt Day in Canada, also known as Truth and Reconciliation Day. 

This year was the first time that September 30th was declared a federal holiday. 

On a day that was proving rather more complicated than I'd hoped - please don't ask why - I hurried through the streets of Victoria, passing all sorts of people clad in the same orange shirt being sported by the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter at home. For myself, I was wearing my favourite cloisonné "Haida Fin" earrings, my Leah Dorion "Breath of Life" facemask, and I carried my Norval Morriseau umbrella. I figured that would have to do.

Speaking of artists, the last big exhibit I saw at the National Gallery of Canada before we left Hades covered the life's work of Alex Janvier.  I was somewhat familiar with the earlier decades of his work, because, years ago,  I helped a friend tidy the phrasing of his Master's thesis on Janvier; his research had included traveling to Cold Lake, Alberta to interview the artist, who was known, but not yet famous.

What I was not prepared for was the very scale of Janvier's development over six or seven decades.  I moved from gallery to gallery, almost having to scoop my jaw from the floor.  Each room brought new styles and experiments in exploding, curling, spiralling gatherings of brilliant colour.

Except for one small room to the side.  Displayed within were the works of the young Janvier at the Blue Quills Residential School.  Outside was expansion, exuberance.  In this small display room, I felt crushed and suffocated.  I couldn't stay long; I felt the walls closing in.

(Ironically enough, apparently it was the principal at Blue Quills that recognised his talent, and steered him towards art school.)

I continued on the journey through the exhibit.  Each passage through a doorway confronted me with newness and daring.  By the end, I was close to tears.

It would be the height of arrogance for me to say I understand what the Indigenous children went through, torn from their families, forced into schools where they were stripped of what they were, not cared for, and often abused.  However, that little dark side gallery within the magnificent showcase of one artist's life's work (which still continues) gave me a glimpse, and some idea of the horror.

Getting miffed

October is usually one of my favourite months.

This one will have its challenges. 

Younger daughter had her first in-person recital in over two years last Sunday.  The event was masked (including the singers, who wore special "singing masks"), carefully spaced, and our British Columbian vaccine cards (mandatory the following day) were checked for admission.

At lunch, following the concert -- which went well, thank you for asking -- elder daughter's godmother remarked that she had a number of friends still refusing the vaccination.

"In the beginning," she said, "I was willing to see this as a difference of opinion.  Now, I'm getting a bit annoyed."  

Coming from a very conservative, and, to be honest, rather eccentric lady, this was a remarkable statement.

She was concerned about the surgeries, procedures, and treatments being deferred by the number of COVID cases in hospital, the vast majority of which are the unvaccinated.  I'm getting a bit antsy myself.  The Resident Fan Boy needs treatment for a condition that is not life-threatening -- yet.