Alright!I finally discovered how to get pictures into my blog.Hopefully I will now be able to produce some more interesting blog entries.Thanks for your patience everyone.

memoir writers homework.

Once again here is a writing exercise undertaken by the members of my former writers group from Toronto,Canada.This one was based on the topic"If animals talked back"from the session on Monday,May 28.

We had both dogs and cats when I was a boy.The main difference between the two was that when you spoke,the dog,a white and brindle little mutt would listen attentively,while the cat would usually ignore you in favor of whatever it is cats think of.In truth,while I spent a lot of time talking to our dog-believe me,it beats imaginary friends-I have no idea if he understood me or not.

Dogs are just so fundamentally different from us,I'm not at all certain what it is a dog thinks,much less what one would say if he could talk back.Cats are another matter.Trying to explain what a cat is thinking to me would be like trying to explain Existentialist Philosophy to...well,to the cat.And even as I sit and ponder that analogy,I get the nagging thought that,in some cruel form of feline karma,the cat actually gets Existentialist Philosophy but can't or won't explain it to me.It's those kinds of esoteric thoughts that made me prefer canine company to feline or even human companionship.Dogs,you see are kind of straight forward and simple in terms of having no hidden agendas

I'm sure my dog was trying to tell me many things,but you see,he couldn't speak.Still,one of a writers skills is interviewing and I would be remiss in not sitting down with my dog and trying to gain his perspective on the life of our family.

Question:Tell me,what is your philosophy in life?
Dog:If you can't eat it or hump it,then pee on it.
Question:is it true that dogs don't like cats?
Dog:well,when you come to live in a family you have to make compromises within the context of your overall philosophy.So you have to try to get along.You see,the cat is too small to hump,and doesn't like humping anyway.And people take a dim view of us eating cats-who would have guessed...unsightly,unsanitary etc.So when it comes to the cat,there's only one thing left to do...
Question:why do you always jump into the drivers seat of the car when we stop at the store.
Dog:well I could say that it's because I like to be in control.But that would be a cat answer.Really though,it's because I've always wanted to drive.I could drive to the butcher shop everyday,then stop by and see that golden retriever that I never get to see because you always take the wrong street when we are going for a walk.And besides,if us dogs could drive,well,the freeway would be a lot safer.

Question:You seem to not like our cat?Can you tell me why?
Dog:What good is he.He eats my food when I'm not looking and he won't chase squirrels,even though he can climb trees and I can't...I've always been insanely jealous of those sharp things on the end of his paws. All he ever does is lay around and thinks about something he calls Existential Philosophy.What good is Philosophy of any kind...you can't eat it or hump it.On the other hand,"if you can't eat it or hump it,then pee on it."Pretty hard to get more existential than that.

Question:Whats the funniest thing that ever happened to you living in our family?
Dog:That's a hard question.Do you remember that time you were chopping wood in the yard and your mother was planting flowers...and that church lady came to visit.And I started humping her leg...well,you see she smelled like that golden retriever...really.But that's not very politically correct of me.So I'm going to say the funniest thing is that time when you went fishing and the end broke off that dry branch you made the rod from.Then what did you do?Spent the next 20 minutes throwing rocks so I would go out in the water and grab that stick and haul the fish in.I could have grabbed that thing right away,but you looked like such a buffoon .It just made sense to play along for a while.

Question:Did you feel like you were well treated in our family?
Dog:for the most part.But I never could understand why on the weekends your mother would cook bacon and bread and the smell would drive me crazy.But then at dinner time all I got was Alpo.But still I got to do a lot of great things...swim,go for car rides,chase cars,run in the woods...and there was that long car ride out west where we stopped and I found that gopher colony.Millions of gophers to chase.It was the most fun I've ever had.Yeah...it was a dogs life.And I did get even with your mom about the bacon...you remember that time the church lady came to visit?There was a time or two you forgot to leave me fresh water,but that was ok.There was lots of cool water in that big white thing.That big white thing was funny too.One time that cat,you know the one that fancies himself a philosopher when all he's really doing is ignoring you,well one time he tried to pretend he was a dog and he fell into that big white thing...funniest thing I ever saw...well,I guess you had to be there...and be a dog.

Well,it might sound something like that,but I really don't know.I really would like to hear the dog's perspective on driving though.And one or two times it's occurred to me that it might be interesting to present my story through the eyes of our dog.He's far more likely to provide an unbiased view than I am.

Apologies for the lack of posts.Not much happening and I've been quite busy.But I will have more posts next week.

The weather still seems to be a bit of a story here.Skies are gray and it's been raining some but mostly the sky just looks really dreary.The Bow river is up,higher even than at mid-week,and it keeps rising a bit everyday.All the other local creeks and rivers are swollen too and I'm watching them a bit anxiously and remembering 2005 when I was flooded out.I lived along the Elbow river then,and in Calgary,that is the really dangerous river.The bow,though bigger tends to stay within it's banks better.I really don't want to go through another flood,as it is a really stressful event.In 2005 I was evacuated to a local college and stayed nearly a week in a small dorm room while the water rose daily and eventually seeped into the basement apartments of the building I was living in.My own apartment on the second floor was unharmed.This time around I am optimistic that the Bow won't flood it's banks.Even if it does,nearby houses are farther from it's banks than those on the Elbow.But all that could change with a lot more rain,and June tends to be a wet month.It's an anxious time.

Video Bar

Please note that my video bar is now up and running.Take a few moments to view some of these song of the day videos,featuring one of the very finest young singers I know,Heather Berry from North Carolina.When I saw my first Heather Berry video a few years ago,I was amazed at her talent.Discovering Heather was,for me reminiscent of discovering another fine young singer,nearly forty years ago.That singer was Emmylou Harris,and she remains one of my very favorite all these many years later.I am absolutely convinced that Heather has a bright future and that many years from now we will be mentioning her as a singer similar in stature to Emmylou.Please take a moment to listen to one or more of her videos in the video bar.

Today's sky over Calgary in one of the strangest,moodiest looking skies I've ever seen,and it would not surprise me at all if we were in for some severe weather.Everywhere over the whole vista there are open parts.letting sunlight through.To the south there is an arch,which looks like a Chinook arch,but really isn't since Chinooks come out of the west or southwest,out over the Rockies.It's not clear behind the arch but it's clearer and more luminous than the skies to the north of it.The sky looks to be drawing water up into itself too,out of the Bow Valley far off to the south.West is a dull gray,streaked and spotted with a lemony yellow in places.The Rockies are  barely visible for the large amount of mist lying close to the ground,but from what I can see,they are losing their snow quickly.The water level in the Bow doesn't reflect the loss of snow,but if these skies open up,all the rivers will soon be higher than normal.I've never seen the bow flood.In these parts,it's the Elbow River that causes all the problems.The North and the northeast are where my biggest concerns lie.Heading straight east,out of downtown the skies are dark almost to the point of blackness,but then as we turn north become more gray,so that they look like battleships low in the water and moving from east to west.The wind at ground level,on 36th street,where I'm standing is out of the west though.I can see dozens of pipe like little tendrils hanging down from those low lying clouds,though none of them appear to be funnels.But from experience.I know that this is the kind of sky that can show funnels very quickly.There appears to be no electrical activity in the sky yet but that too can change in a flash.There was one flash of lightening yesterday,followed immediately by thunder.But only one.It must have rained overnight as there is a lot of water lying on the ground in the downtown area.I slept well and heard neither rain nor thunder.In a word,today has an ominous feel to it,like the severe weather might strike again at a moments notice.I'm not certain how bad it will get,but today is unlikely to be a calm day.It's such a shame that my cell phone was not sufficiently charged for me to get photos of the fascinating heavens over our city this morning.It also seems as I didn't wait quite long enough to do my memoir writers homework on the subject of colours as today the sky is in full display of about a thousand of them,mostly some shades of grey,which I had no idea was so rich in variety.It's as if a huge grey peacock has partly blotted out the sun by spreading its wings over the skies.Weather may be tomorrows headlines here in Calgary.

memoir writers homework

I don't know what happened to the list of topics from my memoir group in Toronto over the last few weeks,but I see that there is now a full list of them up to and including yesterdays meeting.It must be time to complete another homework assignment.I very much miss writing with my colleagues and friends in Toronto,as our sessions were always spirited,fun and revealing in ways I never expected them to be.Today's assignment is on the topic of "colours"and was one of May 28th's topics.I'll try to complete an assignment from yesterdays list a little later this week.

Once I took a photography class in the early1980's,and one of the students asked the instructor a question about black and white film.The instructor evidently though the question did not warrant a lot of comment,as he replied"I don't even know why anyone bothers with black and white.To me its just a waste of time since we see in color".Well,at least most of us do,except the ultra conservatives perhaps,but that's another diatribe.

However,I quite agree with that instructor.Colour is a thing we are just immersed in from the day we are born.My grandmother used to call African people "coloured"and I always thought the term strange,so I asked her what she meant by it and she said"you know exactly who I'm talking about"Colour used as a euphemism.She got really annoyed when I told her I was a coloured person too.I just wasn't brown.Well,I still think I'm right and I don't so much object to this archaic term so long as I'm included in it.

Red is likely my least favorite colour.Our house was always red and white.And our summer cottage,as well as that little two by four and plywood monument to organic chemistry that's parked beside it.All red and white.Just seems a bit lacking in imagination,since we seemed to paint these buildings every couple of years.Maybe,I'd have thought,we could paint at least one of them yellow or purple or some colour besides red.But we never did.

In an art gallery in Calgary,not so many years ago I saw a beautiful painting of a trout migrating upstream through a river,over a bed of gravel,and it reminded me of one of my favorite places,a small stream in the hills of Albert County New Brunswick.And it was not so much the colours themselves that supplied the reminder as it was the thought that those colours were not likely rendered by the artist in exactly the same way as they appeared.Neither does my favorite place in my minds eye.The place is green,of course,leaf green and frog green.It's banks are shades of earth,brown and yellow and black mud.Its stones many coloured.Moss flowing in strands of green.The water different at different times and seasons,but when you scoop up a handful,no color at all,completely clear.Lately I"ve began to wonder if it might not be a good place to have someone drop a few white ashes into the stream bed so that I might add my own colour to God's exquisite rendering of earth and water.What I imagine it to be is not truly the colour it is.I think I see the place as more of an impressionist vision than what it really is.That comes from being away so long.

Memoir/Backstory

Most of what I know of Goose Bay is from hearing my parents talk of the place,mostly in a fond manner.My father talked much more about it than my mother who often just seemed to agree.

I know that Goose Bay was my birthplace,as well as that of my sister,the one that is younger than me by a year.But what of the time before?Most of that knowledge was from my parents stories,but there is also a few pictures that my parents kept on slides.I've seen them all many times.Because of it's northern location there are,of course pictures of Goose Bay under a blanket of snow.And there are pictures of the road,a muddy quagmire.And there are even a few pictures of Goose Bay that don't feature mud or snow.As I recall,there was at least one photograph showing the snow removal equipment at the airport and there was a lot of it.Either as a testament to there being a lot of snow,or there being a vital need to clear runways quickly and efficiently,or more likely both.There was a picture of a parade too,in which I recall,some of that same snow removal equipment was used to haul the floats.I never was clear on what the occasion for the parade was.From all of the pictures that I can remember of Goose Bay,it very much had the look of military bases just about anywhere.The same kind of warehouse looking buildings,guard shacks with big striped gates,army trucks and jeeps everywhere and uniformed personnel walking about.There were planes too,as Goose Bay was an air force base,but not so many.A few jets lined up on a tarmac,ancient looking now but state of the art when the photos were taken.All in all,my parents did a decent job of documenting their stay in Canada's north,if only in a kind of ordinary way.

My father told many stories of Goose Bay,though I only recall a few.I think it must have been in the days before he met my mother,but he tells of meeting a preacher once in the shower room of the army barracks.For some reason he became angered by something during his shower and cut loose with a torrent of colorful language in the best traditions of coal miners anywhere,some of whom can be rather plain spoken.The preacher,showering in another stall introduced himself while they were drying off later,and noticed,"you certainly know how to swear."My father said that despite the incident he and the preacher became good friends and he noted the incident was "embarrassing."I believe the first time I heard him tell that story he was embarrassed at having told it in front of his children,as swearing was not exactly what you would most like to brag about to impressionable children.I've often wondered why he used such foul language in those days,as he tried to keep a civil tongue when at home.Tried but did not always succeed.It could have been boys being boys,or something bigger fueling the foul mouth.I've heard that military personnel have been known for colorful outbursts from time to time so maybe it was just being young and part of the culture.

At one time my father owned a taxi in Goose Bay,though I don't know when he would ever get the time to drive it.Most of his fares he said were between the Canadian and American bases.I'm sure there must have been liquor runs too.though I'm less certain that they involved a liquor store. Likely what his taxi business consisted of was picking up a few worse for wear soldiers each day,during the hours he was not working but still awake.It's unlikely he provided 24 hour service,as I don't recall him mentioning hiring another driver for the cab.The enterprise could not have made a huge profit.To look at Goose Bay in pictures,it hardly looks like the place where a lot of people would take taxis,though I'm certain the mud and drunkenness could make the short appearing walk across base unattractive.

There were things in Goose Bay the apparently most people were not intended to see.My father makes mention of having seen several helicopters inside a hanger long before they came into common use.They were,a number of them, visiting the American side of the base when they saw these helicopters partly hidden by tarps.How they managed to gain clearance to an American base during the cold war is anyone's guess,but it seems that at least some of the things being kept there were not all that secret.My father did make a comment late in the 1980's or maybe the early 1990's that I found astonishing.We were watching some footage of the new stealth bomber/fighter on television when he told me "I saw one of those in Goose Bay in 1956."My father was familiar with  aircraft in general and military aircraft in particular and it seems odd to think if he had seen one of those,that he would have mistaken it for something else.Still he had very little sense of amazement later in life when he saw one again,so perhaps new,bizarre and cutting edge equipment were not so unusual in the Goose Bay of the 1950's.Still.I have no idea as to how my father would have encountered such equipment.

I'm sure the north was a grand adventure for a young boy from Nova Scotia and that is what my father was when he first came to Goose Bay.He worked there for just over ten years as I understand it,as a civilian employee of the Canadian Armed Forces.His job was to operate and maintain a power generating station for the base,a job he held even after being transferred to New Brunswick in the early 1960's.He left Goose Bay to visit Jamaica in the mid 1950's,then again to marry my mother in her home town in 1959,and for the final time in 1962 or early 1963,after both my sister and I were born.

Now aside from all this I have no memory of Goose Bay.I hear of people saying they can remember things in infancy,though I confess,I do not.I do not believe such things are likely.So history,my parents stories and some old photographs are all that constitute my own knowledge of Goose Bay.And,in fact I no longer even have the photographs.