I imagine that, in spite of the perks, it must be hard growing up in the shadow of a world-renowned parent.



Leonard's little boy grows up at age 38. I was listening to the radio this afternoon and heard a new song by Adam Cohen, and then I happened to come across this video tonight. Yes, it's a promotion of his new album, but I think it's an interesting video in itself. Makes me want to hear more of what he has to offer. How about you?

What To Do When There's Nothing To Do

Goin' Nowhere Fast

Ever feel like you're stuck in a rut, or getting nowhere in life?  Spinning your wheels, if you've even got wheels.

These cars are fixtures on the main street of the village where I live.  Their owner has a newer model that he still drives.  I guess his old cars just have too many fond memories to let them go.  Maybe his wife collects salt shakers or china poodles and this is his own sort of collection.  As the man in question is the proprietor of Snider's Garage, he has the place to proudly display them.  Main Street is his own version of the curio cabinet or kitchen shelf.

They also make excellent planters.

For some reason, there are a lot of these cars still on the road in the village.  Maybe Mr. Snider had an Oldsmobile dealership at one time. There's one older fellow that I see every evening parked in the empty lot in front of the hardware store, sitting in his Olds with his window rolled down, wearing his baseball cap, watching the comings and goings on Main Street and waiting for friends and acquaintances to drive up and have a chat with him.  Kind of like drive-through visits, I guess.  Maybe his house is such a mess he doesn't want anyone to come over. 

Or maybe he's embarrassed by how much his wife's salt & pepper shakers collection has gotten out of hand.

It's a big mystery to me.  But I can certainly relate to the feeling of getting nowhere in a hurry, stuck inside an Oldsmobile with the Memphis blues again.





May as Well Try and Catch the Wind

Over the course of a year or so I gathered bits and pieces of rust that I found on the ground during my daily walk.  I gradually assembled them into what I called  rusty angels.  I had good intentions of exhibiting them and even ordered wooden cradled panels to house each one.  I left all the panels in a pile in my studio for another year or so.  The fun of creating was spent and the tedium of preparing them all for presentation just blew my mind, so I blew the project off.  Until this weekend, that is, when my sister-in-law blew in from Quebec and had the brilliant idea to suspend the angels from our crabapple tree.

(No angels were harmed in the Photoshopping of this image!)

Angels in our Midst

Whee!  It was a particularly windy day and the angels twirled and swirled with great enthusiasm.

Another air-related sight we experienced this weekend was the labyrinthian wind farm atop the local Kent Mountain.  Back roads, dirt roads, rutted roads, deep puddles and a warped sense of adventure on the part of our driver got us there and, eventually, back out.  There was no map of the place, which seemed to go on forever.  It was pretty impressive but, quite frankly, if you've seen one giant windmill, you've seen them all. 

See the little people?

Oh, look--turn down another dirt road-- and there's another windmill!

Or sometimes even more than one!

And this is what it looks like inside one of the blades, which was on the ground, not spinning around in the wind, much to my sister-in-law's disappointment. .  She blew up some great plans for a theme park, interpretive centre, souvenir boutique, and tower-top restaurant while she was cogitating inside that  blade.

Ah, but she may as well try and catch the wind.

Donovan sang it first but let's have a different version.

My Pal Al

"I can call you Betty?"

Maybe you'll recall that I did a post the other day about a nearby duck pond.  Well, right next door to that location is a goat farm.  Sometimes I'll be walking along, lost in my thoughts, when I'll get a pungent reminder that I'm nearing this charming little farm.  There is nothing quite like the odour of goat.

As the odour intensifies, I begin to make out the shapes of the grazing animals.

There seems to be one particularly large specimen.  Hold on...that's no goat!

I've heard that it's good to have a donkey on a dairy  farm to keep skittish or ornery cows calm, but an alpaca to chill out the goats?  The goats don't seem to mind, though I have the distinct (pardon the smelly pun) impression that the alpaca is a little self-conscious.

Nevertheless, she turns in profile to present her best side for a photo opportunity.

Ready for her close up (as close as she'll let me come) she whispers with a slight South American accent,

"You can call me Al."

This post is dedicated to Shirley, for many reasons.

Susan Reflecting

My friends in Seattle live near a beautiful little park that is really more of a big garden than a park, and each time we visit them we take a stroll through the grounds. 

Of course, this picture is a Photoshopped version (or vision) of a photo that I got of Susan gazing into the light playing on a pond in the park.  To me, it depicts a soulful moment of reflection.

The original photo was pretty much blown out with the bright light (left) so even that had to be toned down a bit with Photoshop (right).   Notice how I added a "stream" of light flowing at Susan's feet plus a bush of flowers in the middle ground of the final version?

And here's a pool of water in the same park that one of our fine feathered friends was reflecting on as well.

For other "Weekend Reflections" be sure to visit the links at James' "Newtown Area Photo" blog.

And let the light shine in while you all shine on!

This One's for The Sagittarian

Further to our discussion in my previous post, Saj...



Please hurry up and get here, Saj.  Owen's been lying under the bar stool for the past few hours, playing his air guitar.

"I get up in the evening, and I ain't got nothing to say
I come home in the morning, I go to bed feeling the same way
I ain't nothing but tired, man I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey there baby, I could use just a little help
(Chorus)
You can't start a fire, you can't start a fire without a spark
This gun's for hire even if we're just dancing in the dark
Message keeps getting clearer, radio's on and I'm moving round the place
I check my look in the mirror I wanna change my clothes my hair my face
Man I ain't getting nowhere just sitting in a dump like this
There's something happening somewhere baby I just know that there is
(Chorus)
You sit around getting older there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me
I'll shake this world off my shoulders come baby this laughs on me
Stay on the streets of this town and they'll be carving you up alright
They say you got to stay hungry hey baby I'm just about starving tonight
I'm dying for some action I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write
this book
I need a love reaction come on now baby give me just one look
(Chorus)
Hey baby!"

The Boss

One Light Left in Heaven

We pass this house on the drive to town.  Until about 2 years ago, there was still someone living here, and the place wasn't in much better shape at that time.  At night, through the darkness, we'd see a stark, bare lightbulb shining feebly but defiantly through a downstairs window. 

Recently, I heard a song that I fell in love with and I think it makes a touching story to go with this picture. 

"You know I'll wait here for you

I'll wait here for you

No matter where you go

Or what you put me through

And I have walked this floor for hours and hours

Underneath the moon

And I am slowly disappearing here

Just a ghost that's shining through

And I don't know if you'll come back to me

Or if I want you to

I'll be waiting for you"

From"One Light Left in Heaven"

written by Jim Cuddy & Blue Rodeo

Sometimes the Angel

Sometimes the angel welcomes you with open arms but you scarcely dare hope to trust his embrace.

Sometimes the angel turns his back and shows you the moon.

And sometimes life's a carnival ride spinning so fast you can barely hold on.

I heard this duo sing this song live on CBC Radio 2 last week and it's been spinning in my mind ever since.

We Interrupt This Blog...

New and Improved: Movin' On Bonus Valu-Pak!

We interrupt this blog to bring you a bonus illustration, generously suggested by FCW (that's a Fart in the Cosmic Wind for those of you who haven't caught a whiff of his blog before) who sent me a link to a (White) Spot of nostalgia that beautifully illustrates the drive-in I mentioned in the post below (see: "Movin' On").

White Spot No1, Granville Street - 1958

20"H x 32"W; Limited Edition Giclee ; Price:$700

Artist:  Brian Croft

The folks here at Décolleté (well, me) have also thoughtfully provided a video of the tune "Beep beep!" where you can view some pretty sweet little Nash Ramblers and join in the singing with Margaret over at Margaret Panpipes, who knows all the words to the chorus.



Happy Days, indeed.  At least for a kid like me who enjoyed riding around in the back seat of her parents' car, going to the drive-in restaurant for supper, and listening to goofy pop songs on the radio. 

I hope my little self-indulgent trip down Memory Lane will not make too many of you younger folk out there, such as my dear blog pal the  Sagittarian, or my adoptive baby brother  Owen,  feel that their childhoods were deprived in any way!

And here's a family photo, taken round about this time.  I'm sitting on my grandmother's lap (note my poodle skirt! My saddle shoes, alas, had already worn out), my great-grandfather sits behind us, my dad sits in the centre of the picture (note his cool jacket with the leather sleeves), my mother (note the bright red lipstick and long hair pulled back in a braid) holds my relatively new baby sister on her lap, while my great-grandmother sports a jaunty neckerchief.  My grandfather is behind the camera.

12 hours later, my second plane, which left from Montreal, landed with a mighty BUMP! and a resounding bounce or two. I guess the pilot had trouble seeing the tarmac through the fog.

There was a robust, though height-challenged, welcome committe waiting inside the airport.

I think the pilot might have overshot our destination!

Oh, wait a minute...it gets worse. We weren't actually at the North Pole, these were Christmas decorations, up already on November 4! Argh!

But as Scarlett reminds us in the Relator video,

"You can leave whenever you want out."

All Aboard!

~ No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
Destiny is made known silently. ~

Agnes DeMille

*

So that's how I got here. On board the Destiny Empress. Seemed like a good idea at the time, to sign on for a mystery pleasure cruise along the river of Letseewhathappens. But the ship got spun around in the spiralling undertow of habit and caught up in the tenacious shoreweeds of inertia.

One has grown accustomed to the quiet spaciousness of a deserted ship; the silent nights on deck, gazing up at the moon and stars; the long winter nights with the hatch pulled shut, huddled in blankets, serenaded by the yowling winds, motionless in the frozen sea.

The monotony is occasionally relieved by bands of roving tourists, thinking that a night or two of revelry on board the Destiny Empress will grant them temporary amnesia. Their ultimate reward, however, is their ability to return to shore and continue along their own paths, sending back gaudy postcards that trace their journeys.

The Destiny Empress is overdue for an overhaul. She is not meant to rust in the shallows of complacency. Perhaps no trumpets will sound, but her engine will thrum once more.

"When that fog horn blows, you know I will be coming home."

Scattered & Small Song

Hey you down there!


I thought it was high time for some Canadian content and some female energy on Song Saturday so here's a tune from someone, Amelia Curran, I heard on the radio recently. I believe she's from Newfoundland. It's a sweet video, too.

*

A special shout out to Robert who's feeling a bit size-challenged lately in his efforts

To Navigate Through Life. You know you're not alone when someone else is singing about it!

Song Saturday

We're en route down Highway 114 to another concert at Harvey Hall. The Peticodiac River is in the distance, rushing in from the Atlantic, with some of the highest tides in the world. This is the Bay of Fundy.

The fog hangs low over the fields by the Fundy shores.

This is the place! (with some special FX just for fun): Harvey Community Hall, built in 1884.

One of the biggest pleasures of attending concerts at Harvey Hall is the homebaking on sale. True to tradition, I went for the biggest brownie I could find. I think I may scale back a bit in future, though.


(l-r)Jim Blewitt (genuine hippy), Matt Anderson (bluesman), Tim Isaac (potter-cum-cellist)

Isaac & Blewitt are the local musicians/back-to-the-landers who host the gigs at Harvey Hall. They're hot to jam with other cats (as Blewitt calls everyone) passing through the area on their way to play in bigger venues. Tonight's guest star was the powerhouse blues singer/guitarist from Nova Scotia, Matt Anderson. The audience ate up the show with as much gusto as I consumed my extreme brownie!

Here's a taste of what we experienced:

The Hit or Miss Parade

The village street was thronged with excited spectators as the floats rolled past.

The always impressive motorcade.

A village house on Main Street all decked out for the celebrations.

The village I live in has an annual summer event called Steeves Days. It's named after a large German family who settled in the area after the Acadians were booted out by the British. "Steeves" is an anglicized version of "Steiff" as in those wonderful stuffed bears. Not to insinuate that German people resemble stuffed bears! The week-long event is kicked off by a modest parade down Main Street--modest being the key word here. As I am not of German descent and do not attend any of the several Baptist churches in the area, I am not much part of the community in which I live, in spite of the fact that we have been here for 16years. As a consequence, I am usually not in the loop of the goings-on of village life. It happened again this morning, as I was languorously sipping my second cup of Italian roast organic coffee and nibbling at a piece of strawberry shortcake for breakfast, I heard what I first thought was the sound of an extremely large and aggressive band of mosquitoes that had followed us home from Harvey Hall (see post below). I quickly divined, however, that it was more likely a hired gang of bag-pipers who were leading the Steeves Day Parade down the main drag. It was the perfect opportunity for me to rush out and get some pictures to post on my blog to illustrate the charms of village life but by the time I'd hot-footed it the 2 blocks to the parade, it was all but over and starting to rain.

***

SONG SATURDAY

As I proposed this idea last week, to post a tune on Saturdays, here's this week's offering. I thought I'd keep with the bent banjo theme. Harry Manx is a recent favourite of mine:

Silver

Some random sights that caught my eye in NYC last month:

The flip side of when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.

The next trend in medicine--vertebrae replacement to go with your new hips and knees.

If you've still got it, flaunt it!

Grandstanding.


You Got the Silver

Doin' Mickey's Monkey

Put on your Mouseket-ears!