Water like a stone

And the wheel of the year turns again. Two weeks ago, I was walking the Accent Snob on a late November mid-morning, snatched time between buses to and from younger daughter's school in Bells Corner. Both the Ottawa River and the Rideau River (pictured above) were whirling with mists, the silver water looking smooth and thick, like pudding on the boil. I wandered eastward and thought sadly of a friend who had just emailed me that her marriage had ended, and wondered how I'd reply.

Barely a fortnight later, the edges of the Rideau River really were thickening. As I gazed out toward the middle of the Rideau River where the water was dark and still liquid, I glimpsed odd objects dotted along the part where the ice had advanced. Nervously, I continued on for a better look, thinking how they looked about duck-sized and fearing they might be actual trapped birds.

Nope. Someone had evidently been testing the ice with rocks, not someone so foolhardy as to venture out, I hoped. (Although, these days, with global-warming, the ice simply doesn't get as thick as it used to, as people with skidoos and trucks keep discovering every year.)

The sun slipped away, and so did I, before my blood froze as well.

Some Trekkies have way too much time on their hands

This showed up on my Facebook Feed today.  It's over a year old, but heck, I've never seen it before, it's clever, and I'll spare you my rant about what is and what isn't a Christmas song.  Besides, I don't think Patrick Stewart or his cohorts actually mention the word "snow".

Post by Aaron Farrier.

Covers and context

I'm not a frenetic Bruce Springsteen fanatic -- I own exactly two of his albums: Born to Run and Magic,  which almost bookend his long career.  I enjoy his music.

Last night, PBS screened a tribute concert to the Boss.  It was a fundraiser as well as a testimonial, so the audience was clearly rather wealthy, in a not quite comfortable contrast with the lyrical content of the songs which are almost always about the struggling, the dispossessed and the marginalized.  Still, someone has to come with money…

Since I don't follow Springsteen's career that closely, it was an interesting survey of his work with reinterpretations by skillful musicians.  I particularly liked Emmy-Lou Harris' version of "My Hometown", and Elton John's surprisingly powerful rendition of "Philadelphia".

However, there were two moments that stopped me in my tracks and they both featured songs with which I was not familiar.

The first features Mavis Staples, so I knew it was going to be good.  I gather this song became a bit of an anthem after the events of 9/11.


Springsteen wrote "American Skin (41 shots)" partly in response to the shooting of a immigrant named Amadou Diallo in 1999, and has been criticized, threatened, and even boycotted by police officers for performing it. Jackson Brown's performance of this song took place a year before the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri.  It was stunning hearing this last night in the wake of the outcry following the acquittals in Ferguson and New York, but then it's a stunning interpretation without the context.

Under a custard sky (write of passage number thirty-four)

If we don't make it out of the house by 7:30, we won't get the #5 Mackenzie King Bridge. We don't, so we must resign ourselves to the #5 Billings Bridge.

The back of the articulated bus is crammed with middle school students. I assume they're middle school students -- I know the classes at Lisgar Collegiate, where elder daughter went to high school, won't begin for more than an hour after the bus passes the building on Elgin Street.  Also, every second word of every shouted sentence, is f***, a sure sign of what passes for middle school conversation.

The Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter take a side seat near the back door, leaving me to stand and gaze meaningfully at a barely adolescent boy sitting with his back to the window, knees drawn up, feet and packsack on the empty space next to him.  He can only ignore me for so long, so I sit down with the same enthusiasm he displays as he clears a space.

Now I must cast around for a way to survive this first twenty minutes of six hours I'll spend in transit today.  Younger daughter's lift to school has been suspended as her schoolmate spends two weeks in South Africa. It will take an hour and a half to escort her to Bells Corners, the same back, and another round trip in the afternoon to retrieve her.

As the profanities fly, I look past my unwilling seat mate to the sky outside which, this morning, is the colour of custard.  As the bus rolls through Sandy Hill and turns at Strathcona Park, the sun fights its way free of the horizon and collides with a cigar-shaped cloud, spilling gold on either side.

The young boy is now occupied in yelling playfully at an older girl and boy sitting in front.  Their responses are perfunctory, so he kneels on the seat and presses energetically on the backs of their necks.

I manage to avoid his rocking elbows and catch the eye of a bearded fella who is standing near my husband and daughter on the lower level.  I cast my eyes heavenward and I see a smile flicker across his face.

Taurus Moon on Mauve

Not quite a full moon
Clings to a lavender sky
Outside the kitchen

Because in opera we like things big

Crud, it's late. I like this Sesame Street lullaby from my own children's childhoods.

Doily double

Sometimes, when it's really cold and the snow hasn't come yet, the streets look grey and white with strain.  I hadn't noticed this particular effect before -- the web of cracks spreading out from a man-hole cover like a doily dropped in the middle of the suffering road.

I stopped and fumbled my mittens off my hands to take the picture. It was -16 Celsius with a -24 windchill, chilly enough to give me that toothpick sensation in my nostrils, but not nearly as bitter as Ottawa can get.

If I'm not careful, my hands will look something like this road by February, and chunks of skin will peel away.

You think I'm exaggerating, don't you?

Beechwood Gothic

So, late this morning, I was returning home from the drug store, rushing for the crosswalk signal which changed before I could reach it.  Stranded on the curb, there was no escape from the incessant drilling above my head, and it occurred to me that there were workmen on a scaffold removing the upper part of the brick wall that has stood forlornly for three and a half years following the six-alarm fire that took out our local hardware store, half a dozen other businesses and several apartments. Clearly, we're in for another three years of booms, thumps, and blocked sidewalks as yet another cluster of so-called luxury condos take shape in the glacial tradition of Ottawa construction.  The promotions are aimed, predictably, at youngish couples with no kids who will presumably be delighted to pay optimum prices for the location - and spend precious little time in their tiny, expensive abodes. There's a set of townhouses, which also took three years to build, on our street.  When we see the residents at all, they seem to be on their way elsewhere, usually clutching rolled-up yoga mats.

There's an edging below the brick and above the doorways of the abandoned shops.  It's very long and wraps around the corner, because the whole thing used to be the entrance to a bank which was still in operation when we moved to the city fourteen years ago.  In these days of online transactions and ATMs, banks are disappearing right and left, so this one did too, leaving these strange Gothic figures aimlessly waiting in line, including a mum in a tunic with her two baby monks.

It's a longish light, so I fumbled with my phone to capture the stretch of edging farthest away from the workmen, who seemed to be knocking out the bricks individually - for safety reasons, I guess, or dare I hope this stark queue of banking customers will be preserved to wait endlessly for something else?   None of them resemble in the slightest the people whom the condo developers want to attract.

Designated mourner

I'm well aware that I'm not the only one upset by the passing of Mike Nichols.  However, when I look at the huge variety of films he directed, aside from The Graduate which is what seems to be the focus of the articles and obituaries, then I remember his work in front of the cameras and microphone, I feel the jolt again.  What a mind-boggling talent he was.

My favourite Nichols and May sketch is on my iPod with one of my favourite lines:  "Many think of Adler as a man who made mice neurotic.....", but seeing Elaine May and Mike Nichols in action adds a whole new dimension, as in this sketch (early 1960s, I think) which shows a move with cigarette smoke that made its way into The Graduate The first 17 seconds of the soundtrack are missing, but don't let that stop you:



However, about ten years ago, I was idly switching around channels on a Sunday afternoon, and stumbled upon The Designated Mourner, written by Wallace Shawn (the "inconceivable" villain in The Princess Bride, among other things).  Not knowing what it was, I watched in horrified fascination.  It's a "talking heads" play, only three actors describing, almost dispassionately, the horrors of being a doomed intelligentsia in some unnamed repressed regime.  You may not feel inclined to watch the whole thing -- I might, seeing as some wonderful soul has posted it on YouTube in memory of Nichols -- but try watching Nichol's performance in the last ten minutes of the movie (go to the 1 hour, 23 minute mark), as his character, who has survived the culling, describes how he learned what became of his ex-wife.

Loopy

Canada has been rather more interesting than usual for the past ten days, for all the wrong reasons.  We're showing up in other countries' news channels and websites, when  On top of that, tonight is Hallowe'en and it's also a Friday, never a great combination for the police or those of us who prefer that boring old "peace, order, and good government".

Seeing as things have been a decidedly un-Canadian kind of loopy lately, I offer two good kinds of loopy.  First, I adore this.  This is Patrick Godfrey, a second-year music student at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.  Anyone who was in school band knows that the French horn is not easy to play. Just listen to what he does:


Second,  absolutely nothing Canadian about this.  But it is loopy, in the best sense of the word.