2013: A Very Good Year!

Lots of ‘looking-back’ stories at this time of year.
During 2013, two major events happened in our family, and we just happen to have the photos to show:
— On May 29, our grand-niece, Amelie (a.k.a., La niña), was born in Havana, Cuba.

Our nephew was not able to get permission to attend his wife in the delivery room, because of medical regulations there. Everything went well, and his wall-to-wall grin was visible, even in the text of his e-mail! La niña was baptized earlier this month, and all three are doing fine in Havana right now.
However, we have a problem: Madre has been unable to get an emigration visa; they want to live / work

Nelson Mandela

Earlier this morning, the people of South Africa – and indeed the whole world – were in the final stages of giving this remarkable man their final respects. His burial took place in his home village of Qunu.

Our impressions of this remarkable man still range from “terrorist” to “father of his country” … and everything in between.
His death ten days ago came as no surprise, as the 96-year-old statesman had been in poor health for many months. Throughout most of the mourning period, the atmosphere was of an upbeat 'celebration-of-life' by the South African citizens, accompanied by singing and dancing.

'Where were you, when … ?'

Most of us, of the Boomer era, can remember exactly where we were when we heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot.

I had the chance to revisit many of the feelings and of that tragic weekend, during the last couple of weeks. The 50th anniversary shows were quite restrained. (Photo: The Guardian)
Here are some of the thoughts and images that went through my mind all over again:
-- The entire world, especially America, descended into a depressed state: reactions on the streets ranged from outright weeping, to quiet introspection.
-- Did Oswald act alone?
Conspiracy theories still abound (available on any overnight radio talk show!):

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

      Between the crosses, row on row,

   That mark our place; and in the sky

   The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

   Loved and were loved, and now we lie

         In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

   The torch; be yours to hold it high.

   If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

         In Flanders fields.

-- John McCrae

Radio … and Me - 27

Last evening, CBC Radio One presented a special program on 'Ideas,' because today marks the 75th anniversary of the scariest radio drama in history: 'The War of the Worlds.'

Airing of the Orson Welles CBS 'Mercury Theatre of the Air' adaption of the H.G. Wells novel led to panic and outrage by those who heard it as a description of a real event, during the tense years and months that would lead to the beginning of World War II.
Photo: KPCC, Southern California Public Radio
According to a comprehensive article in Wikipedia, 'most of the play was a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins interrupting another program.' It began with an introduction from the novel, and went on to relate an alien invasion of Earth, beginning in a small town called Grover's Mill, New Jersey.
The story grew more and more ominous, as Martian war

The Holy Land

Dear Reader: Here is a Local Cultural Fact:
When a Cape Bretoner casually tells you: 'I'm going to the Holy Land next week,' he/she is not referring to the land where Jesus walked, but to the island on the other side of the Causeway.
Here are a few reasons:

1. At this time of year, it is even more fitting, because of the Fall colours, which are at their glorious best wherever you travel , and the Celtic Colours International Festival, a two-weeks stretch of concerts, displays, and kitchen parties, currently in full swing, literally, all over the island.
2. Recently, I had a chance to read a book -- that was in short supply this summer on the mainland, The Promised Land: A Novel of Cape Breton, by Bill Conall (Boularderie Island Press).
The stories recount the adventures of many 'characters' living on the island, including:

Traffic, Traffic, Everywhere - 2

I have been fascinated by driving for a long time. When I was a youngster, I used to observe drivers' hands, and longed for the day when I would be able to drive.

Over the last 50 years -- in fact, since I have had a driver's license -- I have enjoyed driving, loved the excitement of the 'open road,' which one summer took me all the way to Victoria, B.C.
I have braved the rigours of driving in bad weather, even foggy nights and winter storms, and have survived driving on narrow roads, dirt roads, and 'no roads!'
Until recently, that is, when driving has lost some of its allure.
It has been said that one of the guiding principles behind 'Defensive Driving' ciourses is that you assume that all the other drivers are idiots, and are going to do the wrong thing!
Wise words.

Traffic, Traffic, Everywhere

Just last week, I was complaining about the traffic congestion and construction around here.
We were driving in Halifax, where the usual post-vacation traffic was in full swing, and where almost every artery is having some kind of work done on it.

Here in Bedford, there is major construction activity: just to the south of us, housing for about 40,000 folks who are being added to our population is under construction, and to our west, a brand-new $40 million high school (for 1300 students) has just opened. The streets and roads can barely keep up with the new traffic demands.
During my driving career, I have experienced many kinds of traffic. As a new driver here in Nova Scotia, I loved nothing better than the 'lure of the open road.' I enjoyed highway driving in almost all conditions: from sunny summer afternoons

The Highway Through Nowhere

Today, class, we will present a Nova Scotia geography lesson.
If you look at a map of our province, you will notice that almost all of our cities and towns are located along the sea.
History will tell you that Nova Scotia was settled by people who arrived from the sea, the basis of our original transportation system, and that includes a series of navigable rivers and even canals.
The provincial roadmaps show that our major land routes follow the sea coasts:

-- Highway 101, from Halifax to Yarmouth, follows the contour of the Annapolis Valley, from Windsor to Digby, and the “French Shore" for the rest of the way.
-- Highway 102, from Halifax to Truro, however, is a completely “non-coastal” route.
-- Highway 103, from Halifax to Yarmouth, follows the South Shore region.

Bonne fête!

Demain, nous autres -- les Acadiens et Acadiennes, d'ici, de chez nous, et de partout au monde -- nous célébrons notre Fête nationale.

C'est l'occasion de faire un grand 'Tantamarre,' pour proclamer: 'Asteure q'on est l à, c'est pour y rester!'
C'est aussi la fête de l'Assomption de la Vièrge Marie, 'Stella Maris,' notre Patronne.
Félicitations, et bonne fête, cousins et cousines!
---
Tomorrow, we -- Acadians, from here, from home, and from all over the world -- we celebrate our National Day.
It's time to make a 'Loud Noise,' to proclaim: 'Now that we're here (this time), we're staying!'
It's also the Feast Day of the Assumption of Mary, the Ocean Star, our Patronness.
Congratulations, have a great Acadian Day, cousins!

Ford Explorer 101

During the past two weeks, I drove a rented SUV, a LARGE, black, 2013 Ford Explorer, and returned it this morning.

It was an interesting time, and I'm going to share with you how it came to be.
Two weeks ago, while I was sitting in the line of traffic waiting for the red light to change, I was rear-ended. A total of four vehicles were involved; our van became one of the ‘fillings in the sandwich.'
I felt quite a thump, and the seatbelt and head restraint both did their jobs. No airbags were deployed. My sunglasses landed on the floor, and my iPhone was whipped out of my shirt pocket. However, to the best of my knowledge, no one was hurt.
The police responded quickly and efficiently: three officers took charge to guide us out of the traffic into a parking lot, interview us and carry out the paperwork.
About an hour later, when I drove to the collision shop, I was informed that because of a gap between the hatch door and the body of the van, it was now undriveable

Radio … and Me - 26

There are few singers and even fewer songs that can take me back to a particular spot in my off-and-on radio career.
The singer is Jo Stafford, and the SINGLE song is … to be unveiled later.

She came from the 1940s and 50s, an era with plenty of great singers: Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, to name but a few.
Each of these performers had her own style: Clooney 'would hit every note right in the centre,' Fitzgerald had the famous ‘scat’ element that she could bring in at any time (even when she forgot the lyrics!), Shore's style was totally ‘homespun,’ while Day's was a lot more ‘uptown.’
Jo Stafford's voice was different: more 'mysterious,' (perhaps because she sounded slightly ‘off-mic’ most of the time).
I listened to her songs -- and many other great songs -- on the radio, but was introduced to the beauty of her work during my first radio job.
I was a young news reader at CJCB in Sydney,

Chester Band Concert

The invitation from Paul, a Parish friend, went something like this: the Chester Brass Band and South Shore Chorale are staging a fund-raising concert in the middle of June. Would you like to be the announcer for the event?
Of course, I was intrigued ... and flattered, because it was several years since I had done any announcing besides liturgical readings. We discussed the date and time, the locale (St. Stephen's Anglican Church), and accessibility.
I thought it would be an interesting experience, so I accepted.
It turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable event!

The rehearsal was held six days before the show, in the Band's Hall, which required my getting help to negotiate two outdoor steps. When I arrived, the Band members, squeezed into a small room, were all ready.
I then met the conductor, Cdr. (Ret.) George Morrison, B.Mus, CD, former Supervisor of Music for the Canadian Armed Forces.

Learning to Drive

The month of June for most families is the time of many transitions.
High school graduations, weddings and many other life-altering events take place in June.
For me, it was also the month I got my drivers license!
Many folks may have forgotten a lot of details about their lives, but they can usually remember when they got this prized document.
In June, 1962, I turned 16 while completing Grade 11.
My folks had scraped together enough money to buy a new car, my Mom had learned to drive, and I was given the chance to prepare my skills to get my license.

(Photo: 1962 Corvair; classiccars.com)
Not wanting to waste any time, I got a copy of the latest Driver's Manual from the Department of Highways in late Winter /early Spring, and, I must have practically memorized its contents.
Even today, FIFTY-ONE YEARS LATER,

"We Did It!"

The newspaper headline said it all Monday morning.
The Halifax Mooseheads, led by top prospect Nathan MacKinnon's hat trick, won the Memorial Cup on Sunday night, and earned their first national junior hockey championship.

MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin score 5 points each en route to a Mooseheads victory over the Portland Winterhawks. Top NHL prospect MacKinnon had a hat trick, including a title-clinching goal into an empty net, and Drouin had a five-assist performance as Halifax held off a late Portland rally, to defeat the Winterhawks 6-4 in the final.
Leading 5-2 with under six minutes to go, the Mooseheads

"Look Up, Look Waaayy Up"

-- If you watched CBC Television, Dear Reader, from 1958 to 1985 (and later), you know this phrase well.
The Friendly Giant was a daily 15-minute children's show, featuring Robert Homme (pronounced "hummy") as ‘Friendly,’ and Rod Coneybeare (the voice and manipulator of puppets Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe).
(Photo: www.cs.umd.edu)
Each episode began with a soft-spoken narration, with the camera trucking left on a toy town, and then approaching ‘the boot;’ we had to “Look up, look waaayy up," to the head of the ‘giant.’
-- We are going to have fun, Dear Reader, by reciting portions of the regular script together!
For a treat, check out this opening & closing of a show from 1979.
Here we go: "We're on our way to the castle; I'll hurry over first and go in the back door,

48 Hours

The term, 'blog' (a contraction of, ‘web log’) was coined when people listed and discussed daily events in an essay format in the Internet. Of course, folks have been keeping logs for centuries; my Dad, a retired mariner, always kept a weather log (which was essential if you were tending the wheel of the steamship or sailboat).
A mariner ALWAYS has to know the weather, and my dad was an expert in reading instruments, especially the barometer.
I offer this introduction here, because I am going to discuss some of the various events during my 48 hours this past weekend.
The fun began at about 2 p.m. on Saturday, when I plan to post a new article on our parish website.
I could read the dreaded: ‘Forbidden: 403 error' message, meaning that I was denied access to the website.
When I contacted the site 'Super Administrator,' she explained that our site had been 'hacked' and

The Funnies - 3 - 'Good Grief'

One of the ‘Funnies’ that I was introduced to later on in life was called, ‘Peanuts.’
Much has been written about this comic strip (including many doctoral theses!), which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, and which also later became as set of vastly-popular prime time TV specials, which are still being shown today.
The major event of 1965 that began my admiration for the strip was opening my roommate's ‘Ottawa Citizen,’ and then to have both of us chuckle, giggle and even guffaw to the antics of the characters.
You may have guessed, Dear Reader, that the local newspapers did not carry the strip.
Here are some of the ‘Li'l Folks’ (BTW, the original name of the strip created and drawn by the venerable Charles M. Schultz):
-- Good Old Charlie Brown: the loveable perennial anti-hero, who dreamt of hitting that game-winning home run (but usually struck out); who could never get his pitch to home plate without a formidable, earthquake hit by the opposition batter;

Donations

Sometimes, life can bring pleasant surprises.
One evening last week, while we digested supper by watching TV, the doorbell rang, and my wife went to answer.
Two young girls, one in grade 2 and one in grade 1 at the local elementary school, were standing there (with Mom in the background), asking for a donation to 'Muscular Dystrophy.'
I recall that when folks used to collect for the Jerry Lewis Telethon, it was usually carried out by a group of tall firefighters (members of the International Firefighters Union), and you placed your donation in the 'Boot.'
To use the current jargon, Dear Reader,: For transparency -- I have a form of muscular dystrophy: Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, or C-M-T, and have difficulty walking and performing some fine-motor tasks.
However, the girls' query 'passed the test,' and as my wife was handing over our donation,

The Funnies - 2

Here are more 'Funnies' that I used to see in the newspapers:
-- L'il Abner (Yokum); who was a tall, but not very bright, 'Southern Boy';' with his perpetual, voluptuous girlfriend, Daisy Mae; autocratic Mammy, (whose phrase, 'Ah has spoken!' stopped every argument in its tracks.).
One of the strangest denizens of Dogpatch, U-S-A, Joe Btfsplk, the world's worst jinx, was always drawn with a dark rain cloud over his head.
The strip, written and drawn by Al Capp, ran for 43 years, reaching some 60 million readers. In 1937, it introduced the cultural event known as 'The Sadie Hawkins Dance,' where a woman invites a man of her choice, instead of demurely waiting for a man to ask her.

The Funnies

I started reading daily and weekly newspapers before I could hold the pages open.
So, I had to spread the broadsheet on the floor and sit on it to 'read' the news, and the funnies!'
The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, along with the Sydney Post Record -- later to be renamed the Cape Breton Post -- were the two dailies available in the early 1950s (but then, I'm dating myself!). There was a small local weekly, the Richmond Record, which was published from Arichat, and we also had a subscription to two national weeklies, the Family Herald, and the Farmer's Advocate,which were mostly about farming and other topics of interest to rural readers.
We were well equipped, Dear Reader, for getting the news, supplemented by the local radio stations,

The February … blahs?

During my teaching days, February was predictably a long and boring month. We were halfway through unusually bleak winter, and still had more than a few weeks to go before the magical “March Break.”
It has been slightly different since my retirement (when I am sometimes as busy as ever!), And I want to tell you about my February this year.

First of all, I caught a bad cold and spent most of 10 days in varying degrees of the classic “cabin fever.” You would think I was bored during that time, but, au contraire, news items have been quite riveting:
-- Groundhog Day revealed an assortment of predictions, with the local “Shubenacadie Sam” calling for more snow. We have had 2 major snowstorms in early February, amounting to almost all the snow that fell during last winter. And it's only the middle of the month!
-- Super Bowl XLVII (you figure it out!)

Radio ... and Me - 25

My fascination with radio goes back a long time, and it was during my 4 years at St. FX University that I had a chance to learn how to work on radio shows.
In January of 1966, the usual “mid-winter blahs” were claiming all our waking hours. These were the days before the Super Bowl, when sports fans and football fanatics take a fling on a football game. Many universities and some high schools, at that time, began to organize a … Winter Carnival, complete with sledding and skating and ice-sculpture events, and a round of social activities.

The highlight at St. FX was the legendary “Sophomore Variety Show,” a hilarious mix of amateur comedy skits and music numbers, performed by both young and veteran students, many of whom went on to careers in show business. The Carnival Committee of 1966 wanted to go all out: they organized an ambitious program, called the 'Klondike Karnival,' to run over two weekends and the week in between.
We planned an original radio production

The State of Hockey

You might think that 'hockey' around here lately is all about the N-H-L.
Not quite right.
-- The Halifax Mooseheads of the Québec Major Junior League (officially, 'la Ligue de Hockey Junior Majeur du Québec') are having an excellent season, and have been voted the Canadian Hockey League's top-rated team!

Two of their major stars, centre Nathan MacKinnon (from suburban Cole Harbour, home of superstar Sidney Crosby) and left-winger Jonathan Drouin, were both named to Team Canada at the recent world Junior hockey championships in Ufa, Russia. A third local team member, right-winger Martin Frk, played for Team Czech Republic.
Logo: sportslogos.net
At the juniors, Team Canada played well, placing 1st in the round-robin,