Next up on my reading list:
Scarborough – a novel, by Catherine Hernandez
Curry – Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum
and…
The Mayor of MacDougal Street – A Memoir by the late Dave Van Ronk
Are you a reader? What books are you gnawing on?
I was out for a walk this morning along the Humber River and came across this beautiful Ganoderma. I couldn’t tell what kind of dead tree it was growing on so I’m not sure if it is a Ganoderma tsugae (grows on hemlock) or Ganoderma lucidum (grows on hardwoods). The ganodermas are said to have medicinal properties. Some people make tea from them as a general tonic and for all kinds of specific uses from lowering blood sugar to fighting cancer. I don’t know the degree to which the benefits of taking this stuff have been proven, nor if they have any detrimental effects – I’m not recommending people ingest these mushrooms in any form, as I simply do not know enough about them.
Here’s Eric Dolphy’s take on on the Billy Strayhorn composition, Take the A Train. Wakey wakey, it’s Monday morning.
Charles Mingus – Bass
Eric Dolphy – Bass Clarinet
Clifford Jordan – Tenor Sax
Johnny Coles – Trumpet
Jaki Byard – Piano
Dannie Richmond – Drums
I hadn’t thought about The Roches in years, when somehow or another they recently came up in conversation with a friend. Now some of their tunes are buzzing around my little brain again, so I thought I’d share. I first heard them in NYC in the early 80s, and later wore out a copy of that wonderful eponymous album, with We, The Train, Married Men and more.
Listening to these songs again brings me back to my days living in what must have once been hardware store on Ossington Ave here in Toronto – because the record I just mentioned got a lot of play during those years.
I had divided the space into two studios with a shared kitchen between them. It was a rough and tumble reno job, but it worked out pretty well, considering I didn’t much know what I was doing. There was a bathroom and some painting storage downstairs in a somewhat scary basement. My painting studio was in the front – I had paper screens over the windows for privacy. Bookshelf dividers separated my painting studio from my modest living space. I think it must have once been a hardware store because it had pegboard walls, which I kept in place. I bought a selection of pegboard hooks and this allowed me to hang up paintings wherever I needed on the walls.
In those days I was working “3-shift” at the post office, first in Mississauga and later on Eastern Ave. I was a postal clerk sorting mail at that time, and I was getting by working part time, thanks to a great deal on rent. 3-Shift meant working something like 7:00 pm until midnight. I’d get home at 12:30, or maybe a little later, have a snack and a cold beer, then get to work in the studio. I never dreamed the post office would provide me with a good steady income for 30 years, and an excellent pension after that, nor that I would stumble into all kinds of interesting jobs there along the way, while I continued to feed my art habit – jobs which included managing the biggest shift of the biggest parcel plant in the country, working on two enterprise software implementations, and eventually becoming a spokesperson for the company. Given that I was a square peg in a round hole when it came to fitting in with any kind of corporate culture, I look back on the whole experience as a strange miracle.
I say get to work in the studio and it sounds like such an “action” phrase, but it usually started out with sitting down, contemplating my paintings for a long time. Then I would organize things in the studio, maybe sweep the floor and generally clean up. This was a kind of ritual which enable me to get to that peculiar state of mind in which I could paint. It took years for me to learn to get there without the ritual.
Back then I was a more disciplined painter than I am now. By that I mean I tried to do something in the studio every day. The problem with that is that some days, or nights back then, I could paint up a storm and other nights I had nothing, but I would stick it out in the studio anyway. Some nights I would read novels in there if painting wasn’t going well.
Later I learned to recognize when to paint and when to do other things. Painting can be fickle and unpredictable that way. There are times when I’m on, when I could just keep painting, keep creating, improvising, inventing. These are times when painting is thinking, when the work just flows, and that is an amazing experience. Other times, not so much.
Here’s one of the paintings I made in the Ossington Ave studio. I don’t remember the title. I’m very grateful this painting has a good home.
I still have some woodcuts I made back in those days, but few of the paintings. Some of them I remember well. The Listening Machine. The New Murphy Power Plant. The Bad Inventor. They still resonate with me.
I went through a phase when I was making paintings which I thought of as post-industrial ruins. I remember working on one of them, a painting with a smokestack belching sick greenish smoke. I was working on the smoke one day, really concentrating on getting the ugliest colours I could muster, when I had what I thought was a synesthetic experience. I could smell the colours. How fantastic is that? As I was working, I became conscious of this phenomenon happening to me, and it caused me to concentrate harder on what I was doing. The smell became increasingly intense. Suddenly I looked up and my studio was filling with smoke. I ran into the kitchen where the person who lived and worked in the back studio was making toast. My studio-mate was nowhere to be found, the toast was burnt black, and flames were shooting from the toaster.
The Marshall Butterfly has emerged. See a full selection of our custom mosaic work on the website.
How do you choose a novel to read? Sometimes I do it with great purpose. I’m working my way through the works of a particular writer, or somebody I know says hey have you read such and such by so and so and I pick it up, or I flip through a book and a few words reach out and grab me. This time we picked up a number of free books for the 27th Street Book Box at a time when I was ready to dive into a novel. One of them was a spy novel, The Russia House, the 1989 effort by John Le Carré. I set it aside for who knows what reason and loaded the rest in the little library out front.
I took a long time for me to read this book. It’s one of those novels that builds slowly as the characters are carefully developed. It’s billed as a thriller, but really it burns very slowly. It’s a spy novel and a love story and it would not be too difficult to describe the entire plot of the book in a paragraph or two. John Le Carré’s prose lacks the kind of cadence which defines most so-called thrillers. It’s lumpy and slow, frustratingly so at times. At the same time the characters ring true and the author has first person familiarity with the spy game.
Spying is waiting and spying is worrying. Spying is being yourself but more so. We’re told that repeatedly through this novel. That’s what we readers do. We bide our time, gathering bits of information, learning about the key characters, forming judgements, deciding who we can trust. We put the book down many times. How long is this chapter? NOTHING is happening. There are operators, who garner our respect, and there are bureaucrats, unreasonable figures holding various levels of power. The spy game is compared to a corporation on multiple occasions.
It’s the end of the Cold War and all sides are trying to figure out what that means in the spy business. Some information about Russian military capability comes to light through a disaffected scientist. This scientist involves a former lover to deliver a manuscript to a British publisher, someone he got drunk with once at a party. The information falls to the British “Service” and then to “Langley”. Is it real? Is it a plant? Can the publisher be recruited to become a spy? Can he be trusted? Can anybody be trusted? The publisher falls in love…or is it love? What’s real?
“For his immediate business Barley must use the grey men’s wiles. He must be himself but more so than he has ever been before. He must wait. He must worry. He must be a man reversed, inwardly reconciled, outwardly unfulfilled. He must live secretly on tiptoe, arch as a cat inside his head while he acts the Barley Blair they wish to see, their creature all the way.”
The Russia House is a good spy novel, if a somewhat frustrating one. At times I can really get into this kind of genre fiction, and appreciate the detail and careful pace. It’s currently available free in the 27th Street Book Box.
Here’s some fiddle music for a Saturday morning, the Earl White Stringband performing Apple Blossom.
Today’s nature walk was close to home. We’re so fortunate to live just down the street from that treasure known as Colonel Sam Smith Park. I walked in early and just past the water filtration plant, I saw a coyote coming up from the lake. We both stopped and looked at one another. I was able to snap a picture before it wandered off.
Here’s a selection of plants identified on today’s walk.
I was chatting with a friend the other day about the oddball music I grew up on. My dad loved his jazz, Dixieland and Big Band mostly and he knew those players. “Who’s that on trumpet son?” In his day, my father played clarinet and sax and drums and had a little band – when he wasn’t betting the horses or playing poker that is.
I remember him telling me about the night he went to see Wingy Manone play at some joint, maybe it was the Colonial before it turned into a strip joint. Who knows if this story is true. My father never let facts get in the way of a good story. In this version, he sent a shot of booze up to Wingy, who told the band to “take it away boys”….”I’ve got a sponsor.”
At one point, Dad played Jimmy Rushing until I never wanted to hear Jimmy Rushing again. That is, until I moved out of the house. “Hey Dad, you still got that Jimmy Rushing record? Yeah yeah, the one with Brussels World’s Fair Blues with Benny Goodman on it. Can I tape that? (back then we had cassette tapes).” He was pretty happy about that. I suppose it demonstrated he was right all along. He’d say, “I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong.”
I must have been 7 or 8 when my dad brought home a junk store record player for me, the kind that needed a couple pennies stacked on top of the needle to stop the skipping. I was so excited. He brought me my first record too, and I’ll never forget what it was. I was the only kid on the block who knew Ernest Tubb songs.
For a guy who liked jazz best, he still managed to instill in me a love for rootsy country music which I still enjoy today. He’d say, “There’s only two Hanks, son, and Hank Snow is the real good one.” Yeah, that’s about right.
Shadow, AKA The Old Man, was at the clinic today for some extensive dental surgery. His teeth were in rough shape and he needed several extractions. I know from our experience with Jerry a few years ago, what a huge difference it can make to a cat’s quality of life to have these dental issues addressed. Hopefully this dental work with contribute to enhanced comfort for him through his senior years.
Shadow with his friend George
As usual, the crew at Long Branch Animal Clinic did a fantastic job. We’re really fortunate to have such an excellent clinic in our community. I expected Shadow would still be groggy from today’s drugs and anesthetic, so I brought him upstairs to his fave sofa and let him out of his carrier up there. Shadow, however, would have none of that. He hopped off the sofa and immediately explored the house, touched base with the other cats and the Newfs, and headed for the kitchen in search of a snack. He ate some wet food, and later on tonight, he ate some more, this time laced with some yummy pain-killer.
Shadow is one of the two cats in our home who are on “Team Eugene”. The rest are all squarely on “Team Tuffy P.” When I got back from tai chi class tonight, I joined Tuffy up in the room we call the tree-house, to watch an episode of The Fall. Clearly glad to be at home with the gang, The Old Man settled in on my lap for a lengthy purring and cuddling session.
27th Street 