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A TRIP TO IRELAND

POSTED MARCH 9, 2020

Europe, even southern Europe, is not very hot in winter. The south over the winter is at best, temperate,  and if you are from a northern climate while it is nothing like the extreme cold in Scandinavia or The Baltics, it’s not the season anyone is looking to pay to go out on a rickety old boat in the ocean. So sometimes I use the time to get some things upgraded or repaired on En Plein Air as we did last year in Greece, but other years it’s the time for me to catch up on some things, like going back to Canada, seeing some people, seeing my neurologist and doctor and dentist.  I look for an inexpensive place to moor for the winter season, and now that Captain Ciara is on the scene she is part of the decision making as well.

So my plan for this year is to do that Canada trip in April but right now, as I write this, I am sitting on a train, and using the train’s wifi, on my way to Ireland. Ciara is staying on the boat, which is currently moored in Malta, and she has one of her female doctor friends visiting from Medicins Sans Frontieres.  That’s the organization Ciara worked with for many years when she had to get away from her ex-husband. I don’t know if her friend is more than a friend but they certainly seem close so I hope they have a good time while I am away. Malta is not hot in March, but relative to Europe it’s pretty nice. The temperature when I left was about 17C but sunny so if you are doing anything where you are moving around its short sleeve and shorts weather but not first thing in the morning or later in the evening when the sun goes down.

My trip is to satisfy one of those wishes that “Django the Gennie” agreed to grant Ciara when she agreed to join me as captain. I have referenced before that her ex is a bit of a piece of work. Well, I am not going to detail all of it but from the stories she tells, he was always abusive, and when she “came out” first to herself, then to him, it really got bad. That’s when she left him which was not long after they had married. She has gone her whole adult life since that time trying to function with him ignoring court orders, being physically and verbally abusive to her, and threatening to her friends and family. She left the practice of medicine in Dublin when her mother passed and joined MSF, but still, he would on occasion find her and she would move on. What a way to live.

We all have choices in these matters – fight or flight and Ciara has made a lifetime of flight. Now you might think in this sad story this is the point where there is a turn – a point where our hero/heroine decides to fight – well that’s where you would be wrong. My task in going to Ireland is to lie to the guy and give him back the wedding ring and tell him that she has died just to get him off her trail. It’s not really the underdog winning story we all want but it’s a choice she has made in response to the reality she lives in. So I am off to a little place in southern Ireland where he lives a rural life, does odd jobs as a carpenter, and generally hangs out with others like him.

I am traveling with just a small backpack with some overnight stuff, Ciara’s wedding ring to give back to him, and a bottle of Bourbon – yeah he likes Kentucky Bourbon more than Irish whiskey so you know he is a bit messed up by that alone.

If you surveyed most people who know me, on where I fit on the Macho/ Normal / Wimp measure of fearlessness, most would put me somewhere in the Wimp category unless it is for a cause I believe in, which would push me up into the Normal category. For the task at hand, I have quite a bi-polar perspective – I am mad as hell at this guy and scared as hell as to how my dialogue with him is going to go.

I am going to have lots of free time when I get back to Malta so you should see several posts this winter. I really have a few good ideas for some food-related ones.

Django

KAYAK

POSTED: March 1, 2020

For many of us, even the word KAYAK creates a sense of being alone with nature. Kayaks have been part of my life from as early as I can remember. My mom, being from Quebec, had both canoes and Kayaks as part of her heritage and life growing up. I keep two on En Plein Air for the getting out on the water. It may seem a strange notion for a person who lives on the water to want to get “on the water” but there is something very personal about being in a small craft with almost no displacement, sitting on, and in, the water and the freedom to move quietly into little shallow areas without disturbing nature that is very therapeutic.

There are some things that have just become universal in acceptance and we hardly think about their origins or heritage but they just fit in our lifestyle – pizza, the sandwich, bicycle, umbrella and I would put the Kayak in this group as well. Unlike the pizza pie from Naples or the sandwich from the Earl of Sandwich in England, the kayak was not from a specific place but the northern regions of the northern hemisphere and the indigenous peoples of what we know today as Greenland, Canada, Siberia, Scandinavia, the Baltics and Alaska. They all used the vessel not really as much as a boat but almost an extension of themselves for hunting and fishing on the water. They were made not to a plan or set dimensions but to the size and shape of the user.

Perhaps that’s why even today they feel so personal and even when made of poly formed materials still create a sense of being a calm extension of ourselves.

Ok, so why are you rambling on about kayaks Django? Well, let me tell you.

Jim is a bit of a kayak nut. No, he is not out on the water every day but he and Janice keep four kayaks in their garage and live about a dozen doors from Lake Ontario so they go often. For him, like a lot of people, it is both the experience as well as the notion of the kayak that is important. In a busy competitive, efficient world it is a simple, calm, activity and one that just slows down the synapses that are usually firing away too quickly. It is also the link to nature that most of us need a regular hit of to keep from drowning in the modern world.

I have put in a couple of pictures Jim took when out kayaking with Janice one day. They live in the east end of Toronto in an area called The Beach and sometimes he goes kayaking there but more often does his kayaking down around the Toronto Islands which sit right off the downtown area. One day when kayaking with his son Jason an otter came up beside Jason’s boat. Now Toronto is the fifth largest city in North America and to be able to be out with the cranes and other birds, the big five-foot carp fish and various water mammals like lake otter, muskrats, and beavers is very special.

In Copenhagen, they have a really neat kayaking programme. You can use a kayak for free for two hours but the kayak comes with a little basket and the deal is that you get to use the kayak for free but are to pick up anything in the water that doesn’t belong there. Damb those Danes have their act together!

So what has triggered my inspiration to post this piece today is that Jade sent me an email with an image of Jim back working on a project he started many years ago but is only back to now.

When they had their cottage up in the Parry Sound area of Georgian Bay, the cottage was a Scandinavian style log building Jim had disassembled and moved a few hundred kilometers and reassembled on a nice waterfront lot on a little lake.

 

The cottage was really small, particularly on rainy days with the kids, so a few years later they built what they called the barn. And just to digress for a moment it was designed by Jim and built by him and his buddy John who is a contractor from Ottawa. John is the husband of Janice’s cousin Dawn and John is more kayak nutty then Jim. At last count John had about a dozen canoes and kayaks. Now to hear Jim tell it they built the building together and to hear John tell it, he built the place and Jim just got in the way. The same was the case for much of the reassembly of the log cottage according to John.

The barn was a one and a half story building with a little living area above where the kids had their own living room, as well as a pool table, ping pong table, and air hockey table.  On the ground floor was the workshop with about a forty foot workbench where they could do crafts and hobbies on rainy days. Janice would work on stained glass, jade would work on various sculptures and painting and Jason would either work on his own woodworking projects or do crafts or help Jim.

 

The Barn, is where Jim started the kayak project he is back to working on now. It is a scale model kayak he designed that is about 50% of an actual kayak so about two meters long. The chines and struts are all pine and the cladding is pine veneer laminated.

So after a couple decades from starting it he is back at it. The grand plan was that once finished he was going to podge on images of the various trips they took as a family.  He has always seen it as a bit of a manifestation of the “life is a journey” metaphor.  There have been lots of interruptions in the completion of the project, so perhaps not finishing it is also a metaphor. Naw, Jims not that wise.

 

So I have been rambling on as I am prone to do but stick with me a bit longer. Janice and others have expressed often to me that there are not enough pictures in these little posts I do so I harassed her and she is tracking down some of a kayaking trip they did when Jade and Jason were visiting a couple of years ago in a conservation area close to their home in Key West. Lemon sharks, and all kinds of fish in the less than meter (39 inches) of water below and lots of cranes, pelicans, cormorants, and Ibis in the trees and skies above.

She also mentioned to let people know that if they are planning a trip to the Florida Keys, and particularly to Key West and want recommendations on where to stay, what to do and the best Kayaking excursion companies just drop me a line at djangobisous@bell.net and I can send you out some notes from Jim and Janice.

Django

A RIFF ON ADRIAN

Posted: February 11, 2020

Well, this is a peculiar little piece. Jim has a lot of friends, a stack of acquaintances but only a few close buddies. As time goes on as a married couple people tend to get together with other couples. As a single guy, I see it all the time. A single person is sort of not as much in the picture. But Jims (and Janice’s) buddy Adrian is an exception. They have a long time friendship with him and have seen him through various phases in his life – as a music student at university, as a musician/ composer taking his identity from whoever he was backing up, and through various romantic relationships. Janice and Jim have been in partnership with him in music ventures and in various personal pursuits.

I find it interesting that good friends don’t have to see each other constantly to have a strong relationship. Jim’s relationship with his buddy Jim H.  in Ottawa is like that. Big gaps in seeing each other and then they get together and it’s like they live down the street from each other. The same goes for his buddy and old business partner John. It took me longer to rebuild my relationship with Jim. I had been out of the picture for a long time and never really made any effort to be on the scene, but it is good to back.

So back from my ramble to the topic at hand. Adrian floats in and out of their lives, popping up at Christmas to bake with Janice or in Key West for some sun or in London with Jim when delivering art for Janice.

Janice & Adrian get baked

So that’s the background on Adrian. On September 15th, I get this long email that Jim has sent out late at night after an art show that Janice was in. It was a fun show put together by AWOL Collective the group that Janice has shown with, in Miami, New York, and Toronto. It was on the fourth floor of an apartment building – guerilla gallery sort of thing – very Brooklyn.

A number of friends like Andre and Lee had shown up and it was a pretty good opening.

In Adrian’s busy schedule he showed up with the amazing Liz (Liz Lockrey – see Adrian’s website in Links we love).

So after the show, a few glasses of wine and some food were consumed and it’s pretty clear to me that Jim opened a bottle or two when they made it home.

Now I don’t know why Jim sat down to the computer later that night but he felt compelled to write down the poem below.

A RIFF ON ADRIAN

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Ostinatos to the schooled,

Played with conviction,

Has them all fooled.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Dough in his freezer

For cookies and pies,

Dough in the future,

From royalties & royalty.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Luna on his shoulder,

Friends and family too.

Living vicariously,

Without the miles of the road.

 

Licks at his fingertips

Dough in his freezer

Luna on his shoulder

Mama Bear in his heart.

 

Mama bear in his heart,

At rest, but never resting,

Guiding him always

Passed, but always present.

 

 

 

Nice poem lad. I like it. So why did I post it today and not when Jim scrawled it down? Well, today is Adrian’s birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIAN! I look forward to hanging with you one day in the future.

 

P.S. as always, feel free to share the poem but please credit it to me.

PHONES RING

Posted Nov 2, 2019

A woman I have known for some time confided in me recently. She was burdened by a lot of things. She is about my age which means that she has aging parents, at least one child with issues, and is dealing with the aging process herself and her husbands aging as well.

She is not really a person who gets down much but over time that’s not as true a statement as it once was. She was pretty down when we chatted.  I hope our conversation helped. I think she really just needed to dump it all out.

This website I do is, for the most part, a pretty upbeat thing I think and while we all have reason to get down at times I try not to go there much. But my friend reads what I post here and I just wanted to share how deep she was down that day to say that some days it logical to feel down. She was, and remains, carrying a pretty heavy stress load and some of her friends and family need to understand that.

Anyway, here is the poem I wrote after chatting with her that day. Its not a happy poem and if your having a bad day, well, perhaps you should wait for my next post, but if your just cruising along perhaps reading it will bring into clear focus that the scratch on you new BMW really isn’t that big a deal, or not getting that promotion is not as important as the real issues in life.

 

PHONES RING

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

News of my fathers death,

A confirmation after decades

Of estrangement.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

My son has died.

Finally succumbed to his demons.

My failure, but not mine alone.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

It will be a big stroke one day,

My husband of forty years.

He carries instructions for passersby.

I carry the weight of waiting.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

More tests, more results.

My doctor is inconclusive.

I don’t think it’s the cancer that kills you,

But fearing it’s return.

 

Phones ring.

They ring all the time.

At home, at work, in the car.

Sometimes I answer, most often I don’t.

 

——————————————————————————————————————–

A couple of final thoughts from Django:

I know that was not a fun poem to read. My goal was to capture how far down she was that day.

But after sharing how she felt that day and me sharing the poem with her she seems to be feeling a bit better able to cope. If you see her, give her a hug.

THE STATUARY

Posted: Sept 25, 2019

I was never very political but several friends in high school were a bit over the top that way. Jim was one of them. In grade thirteen (yes that is not a typo, Ontario, Canada had a grade 13 until the late 1990s) the best descriptor I heard of how to get directions to Jim’s political position was to:

“Start on Karl Marx Avenue and then as soon as possible take a sharp left”.

He has mellowed a lot since then but at the time he had a lot of admiration for the policies of Pierre Trudeau who at the time was moving Canada away from the American capitalist dominated democracy model to the more democratic socialism model of most of Europe and Scandinavia.

In recent times while he recognizes the problems of many “new” Canadians wanting Canada to just be a free place but largely a variation on the American model, he still laments the loss of a strong left but has had great hopes for Justin Trudeau. So it is with this background that I got a terrified call from him last week, quite stressed about Justin Trudeau in an image in blackface.

For many of us, the deepest scars of Canada are the way we treated Asian Canadians during the second war, turning away Jews who were fleeing Europe during the war and our awful treatment of our indigenous and Inuit peoples from the first arrival of Europeans until not that long ago. It does not end there but these acts are “our Holocaust” and for some of us, who would like the country to move to more openness, equality, and tolerance there is a powerful movement the other way. So a lot of that hope for our slow but continuing evolution to a more equitable society we pinned on Justin Trudeau.

My buddy was pretty down when we skyped (yes I have a laptop now, a used DELL that Janice gave me after Jim had it upgraded and refurbished), and in our long chat I reminded him of the piece he wrote several years ago inspired by a story that happened in Vancouver B.C. about twenty years ago about bullying and intolerance. The story here is a real stretch of that original event but one that was a logical flow from the original story, especially now with so much bullying in the schools, and some of it racially driven. A lot of Jim’s writing is not up to a publisher’s standard but some pieces, like this one I like.  I have reproduced it here.

 

                                                                              THE STATUARY

“I hate Vancouver” she shrieked as she ran through the front hall to her room.

It had been another draining day. The bullying of his daughter had not stopped, and seemingly nothing could be done. As a single parent, he had moved to West Vancouver in the hope that he and his daughter would fit into a racially mixed environment. A lot of colleagues had told him “if you can’t fit in on the North Shore- maybe it’s you”.  Aruj had taken these words initially as his motivation to make a better life for himself and his only child, but it now felt like an ominous threat.

His wife had left and gone ‘home’ a year and a half earlier because she couldn’t adjust. His secret hope was that when everything settled down and they had carved out a nice life that she would come back. Maybe just for a visit at first, but then permanently. Each Sunday they had a phone conversation. 

He sat in the kitchen and made a tea. Amrapali was still in her room sobbing. The only comfort he could find was that they were working on the problem together. Neither one ever mentioned ‘The girl in Victoria’ who had died at the hands of bullies several years earlier. Or the one in Seattle who had recently taken her own life.  “We will deal with this while it is a small problem” was the way he had come to express it to her, thinking it would offer hope and thinking that by calling it a small problem, he could somehow diminish the real magnitude of this burden.  Every week he saw her spark for life reduced. Her flame was going out. He would have to solve this.

Even the house felt threatening. It was larger than they needed and with them both out all day, it did not feel lived in, or comfortable. They had not much more than a nodding acquaintance with the neighbours as everyone seemed busy with their own lives. The house purchase had worked out financially and when they bought it he thought the swimming pool would be a nice aspect, but they hardly used it, and it was a lot of work to keep it clean. But it was nice to look at and fun when business friends came over or on some hot summer days.

He poured the tea and took one to her. She was working intently on her homework now. As he scanned the room he expected it looked like every teenage girls’ room of her age. The remnants of a child’s life, from not very long ago, mixed with a teenager’s passions and punctuated with some shocking components, at least from his standpoint.

“In a bit, I will start your favourite dinner Amrapali” he said quietly. “Amy,” she said without looking up.

Setting his tea on the centre of a coaster he pulled out a pad with his strategy for dealing with the problem. As an accountant, he found it easier to set it all out on paper, both to organize it and as a technique to test what had been inaccurate assumptions or missed variables.

The list, nor the ones he had drawn up before, didn’t really help. The school administration was involved, the teachers knew, the police had come to the school and given a talk.

The real problem was a handful of girls and their parents. The girls tormenting his daughter were all privileged and their mothers controlled the Parents Association.  Many of the parents of kids at the school were too busy to be involved in the Parent Association very often. They would support whatever activity had been planned, were very supportive of their kids, but with limited time and often two careers the turn out for the Parents Association was usually this group of ‘trophy wives’ several other moms and one or two fathers, depending on the issues planned for the meeting. He was embarrassed he had written TROPHY WIVES in capitals and crossed it out but wrote and circled twice: Parent Association.

As an independent school, the input of this group in both the evolution and administration of the school was considerable, linked to their family’s involvement and ongoing financial support often over generations, and items would only be put on the agenda if this controlling group felt it was appropriate.  He had never felt so humiliated and isolated as his treatment at the meeting the previous week when he had raised the bullying issue again.  The Chairwoman told him they were not concerned with the topic, that it seemed to have been dealt with already and seemed to be isolated to just a few incidents. They would not be putting this on the meeting agenda and the meeting would be focused on planning the next fundraiser.  He pressed the point, and the chair decided to have a vote on whether this topic should be discussed or not – eleven to three against it being on the agenda.

As he packed up to leave the meeting he demanded they record the discussion and vote results in the minutes of the meeting. Her response had echoed through his mind for days- “The minutes of our meeting reflect the conclusions we draw, and decisions we make, not the distractions along the way”.

His daughter’s bullying, and by extension, his daughter, and himself had been reduced to a ‘distraction’.  His only solace was that as he left the meeting he said to the principal, loud enough for everyone to hear “when you are at home in your own safe bed tonight you should reflect on what you heard at this meeting and evaluate what your beliefs are and whether you have a responsibility to every student at this school”.  He heard one person clap as he left the room.

In the privacy of his car after the meeting, he cried. What was he into?

This self-absorbed group of women who spent all their time together working out, going to spas, planning vacations, and shopping had lost all sense of humanity. They were all educated, aware of current issues, yet oblivious to what they were doing with this school and to people’s lives.  His upbringing and beliefs made him sorry for them, but he felt disappointed in himself that he was beginning to feel so much anger and frustration with them as well.

In the days following that meeting, the bullying girls escalated their taunts now making comments to his daughter about him and his ineffectiveness at the meeting. He had made things worse, not better.

He poured another cup of tea and made dinner, linguini with jumbo shrimp and garlic toast with a hint of mint and curry.

She was feeling better now, and they watched one of her favourite shows on TV while they ate. It wasn’t a practice he liked, but with everything else that was going on and her mother gone, it was a way to introduce some fun and special things into her horrible day.

After dinner, he did some office work. As he walked by the security system he noticed a blinking light on the machine indicating it was time to reset the recording. The system turned on whenever it detected movement in the back garden. The insurance broker had suggested it for liability reasons with a pool. Other than when a tree branch fell into the pool the only time the system turned on was when the raccoons would get into their neighbour’s garbage and come into their backyard to wash their food in the pool before eating it. Initially, he had been upset when this occurred as it meant his neighbours continued their sloppy garbage practices, but he and his daughter had enjoyed watching the antics of the raccoons on the tape and he was pleased to see they had another installment to watch tonight.

He put the USB key from the security system in the player in the family room and called her to join him. As he was getting the system set up he looked at the pool to see if the raccoons had left a mess, but it looked fine. “Did you clean up anything by the pool today?” he called.

She said she hadn’t.

The recording began to run, and the timer said it was from Saturday night.  As they started to see shadows moving out of the range of the pool lights he began reflecting on what had happened Saturday wondering if it might have been kids or some real intruders. It had been a very hot but dry night. A woman appeared in the light. She was naked, dropped her pool robe on a chair and slid into the water. Before he could say anything to his daughter three more appeared, all naked, dropping their pool robes and all quietly sliding into the pool. Their voices were low, but it was obvious they were talking about the pool and the last one they were in and the next one they would go to next door. They were moving down the street going for a swim in each pool. After a while, they seemed to forget about the motion-sensitive lights that had come on and were jumping in the pool and laughing. The recording looked like a wild sex party. When they came out of the pool they started drying off in the warm night air and despite moving slowly to not reactivate the motion-sensitive lights the lights from the house lit them up well.

“Look at them Amrapali  – they are all so pasty white, like statues by Michelangelo”.

“I think they are more like statues by Vince the Trainer, Dad” was her fast reply.

“Do you recognize the voices?” His daughter asked. He had not, but just as she asked it became clear. These were four of the parents of the problem girls and four of the problem women in the Parent Association including the Chair.

They looked at each other and started to laugh.

After they regained their composure, he wondered out loud, what they should do with this recording. “We will post it on the internet of course,” his daughter said without hesitation. “They humiliated you, their daughters and others are tormenting me, this is sweet justice.” Her last two words she repeated slowly “Swweeeeet Juuussssssticce.”

“But if we do, we will be no better than them. We will have become the bullies” he countered.

“They came into our yard illegally; doesn’t that count for something dad?”

Over desert, the two were into a raging debate over the question of how to deal with this change in the balance of power. Her spark was back, and in turn, his. This problem would have to be managed of course, but she was happy, and they debated on for some time before bed. They agreed to sleep on it and figure it out the next day.

He was up very early and surprised to see his daughter was as well.

Breakfast was the best it had been for a long time. His daughter headed off to school early and was happy.

“We will figure it out tonight!  Have a good day Amrapali” he called to her as she headed out past the Arbutus trees on their front lawn.

“Tonight” she called back and turned back “I will” and then “Amy”.

She probably didn’t hear her dad as she walked down the sidewalk “Amy”.

 

She was at school early and said hi to a couple of classmates.  At her first class, Amy got out her books, opened her laptop, and smiled.

A little sunset, a little dawn.

P.S. As always, don’t be afraid to reproduce this piece but please attribute it to this website.

Django

WOODSTOCK FIFTY YEARS LATER

Posted: August 15, 2019

Those of you who are devout readers of my dispatches and ramblings know that in my first post I wrote a piece about my buddy Jim and a life-changing event in his life. It occurred fifty years ago this weekend, August 15th to August 18th, 1969. If are a reader who has not read that piece, well SPOILER ALERT – you should go back and read it before you read on now!

So the essence of that experience was that Jim not only did not get to go to Woodstock, but he also shot this poor girl in the arm with an arrow. While I don’t get a lot of emails the shocking nature of this true story really got a few people to respond to me. This post is not a long one but the topic deserves more of a response than I usually do at the year-end Question & Answer posting I do.

The first important part of this story follow up is “what happened to that poor young woman who was shot?” I don’t know, and Jim does not know. At several points, Jim has reached out to try to find out who she was and how she made out in her life but has yet to connect with her. So if anyone you know from New Castle, or Scranton Pennsylvania who is probably in the back half of her 60’s today who cottaged in the lake country north of Brockville and Kingston Ontario in the late summer of 1969 please have her contact me at django@bell.net and I will connect her with Jim.

The second issue is what happened to Jim based on this terrible thing he did. Well, that’s kind of complicated – nothing, and lots.  At the time it was viewed as a terrible, stupid mistake. There were no legal charges, no real consequences in some respects but he never got to apologize. The family of the victim did not want anything to do with him, his parents were overwhelmingly embarrassed by his behavior and it was within days of the young woman and her family going back to the United States and them all going back to school.  So nothing happened in legal terms or even any direct consequences but from that point on he not only had the memory of this terrible error in judgment but was reminded of it regularly when he would add more bad decisions to the growing pile.

So that’s what I know of what happened to the two of them regarding this incident. What is crazy however is a strange turn of events that occurred later in Jim’s life relating to Woodstock, the event that his parents did not allow him to go to that weekend. While he had a lot of fun playing music himself he was very much a recreational musician but did enjoy photographing bands for a press service in the mid-’70  at the end of high school. It was probably that experience and that his son Jason, a musician and music production student at the time, as well as a friend Adrian (see links we love), a lead guitarist with some known bands, that Jim and Janice started to fund some emerging artists for their first albums and then eventually became partners in an indie record label.

Jim did not bring any musical talent to the partnership, just some business experience but one project his partner in that company, Brian did with the label was a tribute album to THE BAND, who of course had played at Woodstock. Garth Hudson from The Band was the key figure in putting this together and brought in a bunch of musical friends to play a number of songs. One of those artists was Neil Young who also played Woodstock of course with Crosby Stills Nash and Young.  So while he did not make it to Woodstock that weekend in 1969, he eventually had a slice of that memory many decades later.

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The album, as well as a two-volume extended version, is available through Curve Music. Just go to our LINKS WE LOVE section and you can find more details there.

 

FATHERS DAY

Posted: June 16, 2019

For any of you who have been paying attention, I am not a father. And my dad and granddads are all passed.

So what I am writing about today is Jim – well not Jim exactly but his dad.

Jim’s dad was a bit of a classic of his era. He did woodworking and built their cottage and could fix the car and the only thing he could cook was on a barbeque. You know – that kind of dad. He was a dependable sort of guy who people could rely on to do be supportive when needed and speak his mind when that was needed. He was a lithographer by trade and ran a bunch of printing plants across Canada for the Queens Printer in Canada (the Federal Government printing office).

He was not a young guy when Jim was born ( I think he was about 35 or older) and perhaps because of that or his own upbringing that saw him leave home at sixteen, or having a first child (Jim’s sister) nine years earlier who was more conventional, he and Jims mom did not quite know what to make of Jim. This was a wild monkey, to say the least, and neither of Jim’s parents had any idea how to manage him.

The good news is that they all survived Jims years in public school (if you have not read my first post you might want to now as it explains some of Jim’s behavior in public school) and against all odds his years in high school as well.  Today ADHD and a variety of other mental health descriptors would be applied but at the time the kindest label was the one I used earlier – wild monkey.

Jim had a life-changing event when we were traveling in Europe in 1973 with our other buddy Jim (another Jim, yah that’s the only name they gave out in 1954) which really made him straighten out, or at least be more focused. He scooted back to Canada at the end of the summer after high school, slid into University and there was no looking back. All his energy was now channeled into something. He would work all night as a security guard then go to school in the day and catch a bit of sleep in the evening. That’s how he lived through first year and went from a failing student in high school to a straight-A student who was in the top of his class for most of his courses in first-year university.

It was quite a scary transformation and one that his parents had given up on seeing happen.

The really good news is that his parents went on to live into their eighties and from that time in 1973 until they passed Jim had a really good relationship with them but has always been haunted by how bad a kid he had been until then.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, its because today, Fathers Day, while his kids, Jade and Jason were preparing him an amazing meal, Jim sat down at the computer and banged out this poem about his dad and just sent it to me. It could use some edits and Jim is not the strongest poet but damn it’s pretty straight up.

 

A SHORT POEM ON FATHERS DAY

I don’t know all the things

I learned from my dad.

But when doing some carpentry

Was reminded of his approach to objects.

 

Things exist for a reason

And until they have fulfilled

That reason to exist

Are somewhat incomplete.

 

When a nail would be bent,

We would find a hard surface to hold it on

And pound it with a hammer until straight.

The nail could now fulfill its destiny.

 

Toothpicks needed

To find a mouth,

And both ends used,

To be complete.

 

A transit ticket

Lies waiting

To be dropped

In its box.

 

A bottle of rye should not

Be left half consumed

Biding its time

To complete its task.

 

I was a bit of a mess then,

Much more than incomplete,

But he didn’t

Give up on me.

 

You can’t analyze a tall man,

In a short poem.

Suffice it to say,

He straightened bent nails.

 

 

 

P.S. from Django:                                                                                                                                                                        Because I was hustling to get this posted I have not tracked down a picture of Jims Dad or Jim with his kids but I will post those images here when I get them. Also as always, feel free to reproduce the poem but please attribute it to this website.

 

POISSONS DE TERRE DOUX

Posted: April 3, 2019

When I sat down to write this post the focus was going to be about the Tortierre recipe that my Odie always made and the Tortierre recipe that Jims Nana did and I was going to compare the two. Well that may appear at some point in the future and it is a nice comparison of those two meat pies but in starting to write it, what became clear is that I really wanted to get down some thoughts on the life my Odie had. It was tough and colourful and spaned a time in history and a part of the world that saw a lot of change.

For those of you who have read all my posts, you will know that I was only marginally better as a grandson as I was as a son. But with that said my Odie did mean a lot to me and I did spend more time with her before she passed a few years ago.

Before I even get into this story I should comment on the title of this piece. For those who do not read French, Poissons de Terre Doux means Sweet Land Fish in English, and for those who do read French, yes that says poisons de terre doux, which is a pretty strange combination of words but stick with me here and it will all be explained in this piece.

So where do I start – well much of how my fathers family evolved flowed from the first world war and was then exaggerated by the second world war.

My Odie was born in 1899 and had two boys, and one daughter, my dad being born in 1919. She was from a little village in Brittany as was the man (my grandfather) she would eventually marry was also from there.

So at the beginning of the first world war my grandad went off to war, survived and came back. But having seen more of the world than just his village decided to not be a fisherman like his father, as he had seen how difficult and at times dangerous a life it could be.  He chose instead to be a chocolatier.  After trying to get an apprenticeship in Rennes and then Brussels he ended up in Paris working for a master chocolatier who was a bit of an old-world version of that trade. Among the other components of the trade he learned the art of making chocolate molds and distinguished himself from the other apprentices in this aspect. When he returned to his little port town to set up shop, it was a fortuitous time as his father who was retiring from fishing was able to let him use the front of his building which his parents  had used as a fish store. It was a very rough space and of course, smelled of fish.

When he (my great grandfather) would come home with the days catch, it was my great grandmother who would then sell the fish that day in the store while he cleaned up the boat and geared up for the following day. By selling in the store they always got a better price than selling at the dock and he was able to retire, unlike most fisherman who would essentially fish till they died.

So the way my Odie tells it, she and my grandad cleaned up the old fish store and geared up to open the chocolate shop. But there was a problem. The village was very controlled by the few merchants in the town and there was a law that this space could only be used as a fish store. The town had very few stores and had laws that protected the boulangerie from having competition, the patisserie, the fresh grocer, etc. So while the only chocolate that was being sold was a very small selection in a small store that was a dry goods and hardware store that also sold sweaters and boots, this store (my great grandparents store) could only be used to sell fish.

Now when Odie tells the story she gets very worked up at this point talking about her husband, buckling down and working for over a month on doing new chocolate molds – all  in the shape of various local fish. Some were very small at less than 10 cm (4 inches) but many more like 30 to 40 cm (16-20 inches) and a few that were over a meter in length (40 inches). I wont go into the details that Odie would tell about his exact designs with fish scales and other details but she was very proud of what he produced.

While he was working on this Odie and some friends were working away on cleaning up the store and trying to get rid of the fishy smell. My grandmother was  pregnant with her third child at the time. She would get quite graphic in her details of the fish smell often overwhelming her and the sickness that would ensue. I will spare you those details. During this time my great grandfather the retired fisherman was talking to locals to get them onside with the idea of the chocolate shop. During this time he was also making the new sign for the business.

When they opened as Poissons de Terre Doux, there was very little opposition, but lots of snickers regarding the name.

The business did well and my father, his brother, and sister had a very good life growing up there. This happy story might end there but World War II intervened.

When we look back at history it is easy to identify the Third Reich as being “bad” and all other countries they took over as being “good”.  The reality is that in several countries – Holland, France, and others – there were a number of people who, tired of war from less than a generation before, wanted peace – at almost all costs, and while not welcoming the German occupation, looked at it as the lesser evil.  Apparently my uncle who was a few years older than my dad was in that group and was part of the French administration controlled by the Germans and as he was an early supporter became quite senior in that puppet regime.  My grandparents and my aunt and my dad never spoke to him again. This was because they were so ashamed of his decision but also because after a few years and the liberation of France he died. Its not clear if he died at the hands of the Germans or the Allies or the French Resistance.  If he had come back to the village in Brittany he had grown up in he might have died at the hands of his relatives!

My father was too young to be involved in the war but wanting to help, worked most of the time with his mom at the chocolate shop while his dad and sister did some work in the shop but both also spent their time in minor roles in the French Resistance. It was a classic tragedy of siblings or children and parents on different sides of political conflict.

At the end of the war, my father was recommended by several respected local people in his town for a position in the government and almost instantly was swept up in the French Diplomatic Service in a very junior administrative role. The succession of governments, ideas and the various swings in perspective meant that many senior people were dismissed based on their history and very junior people like my father rose through the ranks not by merit but by not being affiliated with any group or party.  And that is how my father found himself in his 30’s in a middle ranking position with the French Embassy in Ottawa, Canada in the early 1950’s and eventually met a nice French Canadian girl – my mom.

So I have been off on this bit of historical drama but need to bring you back to the story of the chocolate shop. In the 1950s my grandfather, grandmother and my aunt ran the shop until my aunt died of cancer and then a few years later my grandfather passed away as well. My Odie moved back into the flat above the store and rented the storefront to a company selling local handicrafts and antiques to tourists.

For years I have been trying to track down a photograph of the store, but a few years ago, a good friend saw some chocolate molds and photographed them for me. They had been purchased for props for the film “Chocolate” set a long distance away from Brittany but the molds bore the stamp of my grandfather. I have been able to get a few photos of those molds, but these are all the medium-sized ones up to about 30 cm (12 inches) – I have never seen any of the really large ones. I can’t imagine what a one-meter (over a yard)  chocolate fish would be like!

 

19cm chocolate fish mold 1

 

 

 

CAPTAIN CIERA

Posted January 5, 2019

Usually, my posts are thought out and a bit more reflective, but I am pretty bogged down with lots going on so this one is going to be tight and without as many of my usual diversions.

I got my new captain! From my post last summer about Captain Kyle post you know that I had my eye on her for some time but she had other commitments, so I muddled through waiting to get her on En Plein Air. The wait was worth it.

Her name is Ciera and for those of us who are not Irish its pronounced Kee-ra. She is about ten years younger than I am -ok I will help you with the math – she is in her mid 50’s. To be brief, she is a medical doctor, a bit on the run from a nasty husband, and lives in the moment. She is a great captain, much more like Captain Sven, so I can just not sweat how the boat is handled.

She is from County Cork and her dad was a sailor. He didn’t do much fishing but used his boat in season to take tourists out and tell them stories about the region. In the off season, he would write but was never published. Her mom worked a bit with her dad on the boat but was a textile artist who at times just made really kitschy pieces for tourists but in her later life was recognized for her landscape quilts and had some pretty big art shows.

Ciera was not artistic and unlike her parents, she was focused on science, which eventually led her to a degree in medicine. Much of her adult life was not very nice and I will have to leave that to another day to tell you about.

So all through her life, she sailed with her parents, and that skillset and a healthy respect for the moods of the sea, made her the captain she is.

The deal I cut with her is pretty straight up. Everything we earn goes first to the boat – repairs, dockage, fuel, any hookup charges, and also includes our personal food and wine. The rest gets split between us. So what this amounts to is that in slow months there is nothing left to split and once we get to some good months there will be a bit, and of course, this is getting her and me our room and board covered in the boat costs. But she has a pension and some money that she can access when she needs to and I have my little Canadian allowance so life is pretty good and when things are slow she will be able to go traveling a bit and with someone to look after the boat in slow times I will be able to make plans to get back to Canada to see my neurologist, my dentist and a few friends like Jim and Janice.

Everything I just described in terms of our arrangement is what I proposed and she agreed to but she had one other stipulation that I agreed to. Whenever she wants and for three times, she can ask me for a big favour. And she made it clear they are big – like donating a kidney big.  I have a good sense of one of them and even though this is a really open-ended commitment on my part I agreed. Life is a gamble and from the exposure I have had to her over several months I trust her.

She is almost as tall as me, attractive with long grey hair and is not overweight but solid and probably stronger than I am. I understand through her whole life she has worked out which makes her quite a contrast to me.

So before you all start getting excited about this as a new romantic relationship in my life (that was the first thing Janice said when I sent them an email about her) you should also know she is a lesbian. So this is my business partner, captain, and buddy I am introducing.

I will fill in more details later but for now I am in a bit of a scramble as we are off to the southern coast of Greece having some mechanical work on the boat done in the off season.

Django

YEAR END 2018 RESPONSES TO EMAILS

Posted: December 23, 2018

Well, it’s interesting that over the last year we have had many more people reading multiple posts and spending longer on the website but fewer emails. Remember if you want to find me just send me an email at djangobisou@bell.net.

So there were a few emails that covered the same issues so I am going to write a bit longer an explanation on just two topics covered in these two typical emails.

  1. I am a novice cook and am liking the cooking posts but I am seeing a guy who says that your not a trained chef so I should ignore your food postings. Also, what do you think of cookbooks and any you would recommend?

These are good questions. So first, the easy one – on the issue of cookbooks, I have been working on a post on that very topic so watch for it. The simple answer is that like music there is a full range out there and you need to find which author appeals to you best. Today there are so many good cookbooks its overwhelming.  But watch for that full-on post on the topic. I have a number of posts that I want to do and Jim has some topics for me so it won’t be until late 2019 I expect.

The second part of your question regarding my credentials is also pretty straightforward but deserves a longer explanation. I didn’t go to chef school, which when I was young didn’t matter as much because there were some pretty awesome apprentice programs. I didn’t do that either, nor did I work under a really good chef. I just worked in a food factory (the food prep area of a cruise ship) and didn’t know anything about what I was making. I could have been putting bolts on a car in an assembly line and know about as much about cooking. That was the early days of working on the cruise lines. After a while, I started to get a better idea of what real cooking was but it was still largely as a contributor or the master of only one small component. I went for over a month where almost all I did was prepare and caramelize onions. Another time I was doing shoestring potatoes.

So while doing those things I wasn’t learning to be a cook or a chef but just doing the repetitive exercise that today a robot would do. What did happen however was that occasionally when onshore my shipmates would expect me to cook some meals as I worked in the kitchen on the ship so I would make something that was a direct extension of something I had been doing. Some would ask about the calorie count or glutin etc. and I had no idea. When I first started using a conventional residential stove I learned I needed to set a temperature and preheat it which was bizarre to me. Most of my tasks had been to prepare something as shown, put it in oven thirteen, for example, press the preset timer button and then get the next batch ready to go in when the first batch was ready. I had no idea for example what the temperature was or whether we were roasting or baking something. I was just a human-robot.

Over time I learned to cook but most of that came over time as I developed an interest in cooking and started to get to do more interesting things in the kitchen. But I don’t want to exaggerate it – I was never trained, but have lots of hours in on a bunch of basic kitchen tasks. Later when I needed to cook to live and I genuinely started to put it all together, but even then it was all trial and error working of a core skill I might have. If you have looked at my posts and read about cooking for Marc and Lotte and family in The Netherlands,  I  was a pretty amateur cook overall but could nail a few key things and had what superficially looked like immense knowledge. The big thing for me was to learn new measures. When making hollandaise sauce at home you measure in tablespoons and teaspoons, not in liters!

So your boyfriend is right – I am not an educated chef. Or a trained chef. Or even a trained cook. I am just a guy who is discovering fun things in the kitchen and like Jim, we share some ideas like two characters who have just discovered camping for the first time and are sharing some things that seasoned campers would laugh at and see as self – evident. Jim went back to a local college culinary program when he retired in his 40’s but didn’t spend a lot of time learning to cook. His main interest at the time was the financial aspects of the food industry and restaurants. Even when he started his cooking school he wasn’t the guy teaching the classes or making the food, he was running the business and hired the culinary talent.

So just think of me on the same journey as you in the kitchen. On some things, I might be a bit ahead of you or you a bit ahead of me. It’s not a competition. It’s all good.

 

  1. Django you seem to be pretty focused on the past, and I don’t see a lot of present or future in your posts. What’s that about?”

Ah, well this is probably the most important part of what we are doing with this website, so I am going to chose my words carefully so I don’t upset Jim and you should get a mug of coffee to reflect on this as you read if its before noon, and a glass of wine if its after 6 pm and its your choice in the middle.

If you read the ABOUT section or have read many of my posts you probably know that Jim and I both have the same neurological issues. You probably also know that Jim decided to do this website for several reasons.

The first was to get me “back on my feet” and doing something positive.

But an equally important second reason was for he and I to work together with the idea that my deep stress, anxiety, etc. which is probably at the root of my problem will be reduced if I get a bit of structure in my life and have a future I am confident about. The other side of that symbiotic relationship I have with Jim is that he is learning to be a lot more like what I have been – living in the moment. Jim has never lived fully in the moment. The two other tenses – past and future tend to dominate and the present is only the tool on the way to using the experience of the past to change the future. Most people who are (mis)wired this way are successful as it’s a winning formula for achieving things, but not a winning formula in life. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that he doesn’t enjoy himself in the present it’s just the mix is pretty slanted to the past and especially to the future. So he is working on being more like me to truly live in the moment.

And the third reason he wanted to do this website is that  a person who has been focused on the future who learns that his neurological system may well let him down means that the future may not be quite what you thought it was going to be. To be blunt, having an episode where you are looking at a screen and can’t remember what the words mean, or having the right half of your body not function for an hour scared the hell out of him. His parents both had dementia and he watched the slow motion process of them losing their minds. Yikes!

To that end, I have actually been working on a draft that I am not happy with quite yet called:   “Becoming comfortable with the notion of losing your mind” which really explains more of this.

But the point here is that he wants to have these posts to tell the stories and document the memories that are important to him, things and people and experiences and emotions that are important to him and Janice so that he will have some reference point to who he was as things start to go. So some of the things you are reading about here are important parts of his life, some are just fun stories of friends lives and some are just ramblings. But they are all important to him, and some to Janice and/or me as well. Sorry to go all heavy on you but that is what we are really doing here.

With that said I expect that you will see more present creeping into the pieces as Jim is starting to spend some time in that (present) dimension and he is the one who feeds me ideas for posts.

————————————————————————–

So that’s it for my responses to the emails.  As we come up to the end of the year I am not really a “new years resolutions” guy but we are living in very ominous times and as I have never been as future-focused as Jim (well the truth is I have never thought about the future until linking up with Jim again) here is what I see for 2019:

  1. Putin will continue his aggression and Trump will be one of several leaders to not respond
  2. Trump will trigger a massive economic recession through foreign and trade policy
  3. Theresa May will continue to grapple with a stupid party and an even more stupid Parliament
  4. Janice and Jim will go to Russia, and the Baltics and Scandanavia for a trip
  5. I will get my new captain and hopefully continue to do well in my improved life.

So the first three are sad but predictable, the fourth one is interesting and the fifth one, of course, is the only one that matters. LOL!  I am pretty pumped about getting my new captain and once she is on board (literally and figurately) I will post some details.

Enjoy the holiday season and see you on the other side.

Django

A Limited View of The Future

A Limited View of The Future