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Backyard Action
Bruce, King of the Jungle
Tuffy P coming home tomorrow
Tuffy P has been road-tripping around Quebec with pal Toni all week. She’ll be home Saturday evening (yay!). The photo is from Toni’s Instagram.
Episode 3: The 27th Street Podcast
Episode 3 of the 27th Street Podcast is now available.
Today on The Twenty Seventh Street Podcast, I speak with Valerie and Jim Clark, Toronto’s vintage poster experts and co-owners of I Desire Vintage Posters. Here are some of the posters we talked about.
One of the most rare:
Pan Am San Francisco
Hawaii Overnight c. 1938
Frank McIntosh
27″ x 41″
B+, L
Canadian Pacific/Cruise across the Great Lakes 1936
Norman Fraser
35 1/2″ x 24″
A-,P, Silkscreen
Bally Lotus 1973
Bernard Villemot
62 1/4″ x 46″
A-,L
Jim Clark’s blog: be sure to check out Jim Clark’s blog, a wonderful source of information about vintage posters.
Notes on the music: I’m playing a home-made fretless salad bowl banjo for both the introduction and the ending music of this podcast. The intro is the first part of a traditional Old Time tune called Walking in the Parlor. The tune at the end of the podcast is an old time fiddle tune called Angeline the Baker.
Episode 4 coming soon: I’ll be interviewing film-maker, painter, writer and great reader, Candy Minx. We’ll be talking books and the Candy Minx World Peace Reading List.
Election Coverage
It seems the election coverage has been ramping up since the Labour Day weekend, as if the real campaign has only just begun. So far only one of the candidates in my area has been around to try to convince me to vote for him and his party. Everybody has lots of promises, though. Promises, promises, promises. I’m reminded of the old Sunnyland Slim blues, Be Careful How you Vote (for the one you vote for, just might let you down).
Words to live by?
Here’s Leroy Troy (warning this video contains banjo tricks….don’t try this at home)
New podcasts coming soon
I had a wonderful time today talking with Valerie and Jim Clark, co-owners of I Desire Vintage Posters here in Toronto, for the next 27th Street Podcast. Valerie and Jim turned their love of vintage posters into a successful business – they’ve been at it for 28 years now. Our conversation will become Episode 3 of the podcast.
Episode 4 will feature a conversation with my pal Candy Minx about her World Peace Reading List. Candy is about the most well-read person I know and we’ve been arguing about books since we met at York University back in the 80s.
I hope to have Episode 3 ready to go in the next day or so, and expect Episode 4 in a couple weeks.
In Spite of Ourselves
It’s earworm time on 27th Street. Here are John Prine and Iris DeMent performing In Spite of Ourselves.
I could listen to this one a dozen times in a row, no problem.
Accordion Boogie
Here’s Dick Contino rocking out on the accordion. I love the fantastic interplay between Dick Contino on piano accordion and Corky Bennett on Hammond B3. These guys just cook.
A banner year for spiders
Here in Long Branch we see a lot of spiders. It was one of the first things I noticed when we moved here several years ago. There were far and away more spiders than around our old place in the Caledonia and St. Clair area (also more birds, less stray cats, and a few coyotes).
I’m certain that 2015 has been our biggest year for spiders yet. There are spiders of all sizes from the tiniest little ones to larger specimens like the one I photographed guarding our hose. I’m not against spiders. They have their place. Some of them are quite beautiful. They eat other little critters, and mostly they don’t bother me. Build your web in such a way that I can’t get at the hose or can’t open the shed, though, without seriously disturbing your web-building activities, and you’re going to find yourself doing some reconstruction.
As much as I say I get along pretty well with the spider population, I confess I don’t like them on me. In fact, when I discover one on me, I have an uncontrolled reaction to swat it off. It happens from time to time when I’m fly fishing a brushy stream, and a spider lands on my hat as I duck under some branches. When I see the spider I can’t stop the violent swatting action. Once I came close to breaking a fly rod, as I swatted at the spider with rod in hand. I slapped the tip against the water as I rid myself of the spider crawling on my shoulder towards my neck. Fortunately, the rod – which was a jewel, a hand-made 4-weight rod, made by Ted Knott – was fine.
27th Street 