Category Archives: JANICE & JIM

COINCIDENCE

POSTED: JUNE 1, 2025

Any regular visitors to this website know that I don’t understand exactly how everything works in the world. There is some stuff that escapes me – almost everything in the world of science for example! But the other things that often have me baffled, just when I think I have a good handle on them, are the things that occur in life.  Coincidence is just such a notion. Sometimes its serendipity, sometimes neutral and sometimes bad, but regardless of the context I always find it more than a bit spooky.

Ian Fleming wrote (and I am paraphrasing) “something occurring once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action”.  Well, this week I was talking to my buddy Jim and he told me about just such a situation. Actually enemy action is not exactly accurate but some serious overlaps in events.

End of The Road Ukulele Group, Gardens Hotel, Key West

It started with his partner Janice playing with her Ukulele group in Key West about six weeks ago before Janice and Jim made the tough  decision to head back to Canada early. The ukulele players range from professional to recreational musicians who play in various parks, pubs, and at events just for the fun of it. The ukuleles when played en masse are quite a formidable sound. So, a couple of weeks ago after playing in a pub one night for about sixty people and then playing a few days later at an outdoor garden party that was a fundraiser for local worthy cause they found themselves at an evening event to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the HINDU, a fine old wooden hull schooner that had recently been rebuilt and this was the relaunch. Various nautical and sea focused songs were performed and it was a good time. The day had seen all sorts of musical acts, and various tributes and stories about the fine old boat and this was one of the last of the acts to perform.

Now Key West is a small community so it was not really a coincidence that they were playing there as one of the ukulele players was related to the owners.

 

 

End Of The Road Ukulele Group Paying Dockside At HINDU Relaunch

 

What was a coincidence however is that the HINDU was the boat that my buddy Jim and Janice went on in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1978 as part of their honeymoon. I don’t have any pictures of them on the boat at the time but Jim had a couple of shots from their honeymoon trip camping through New England.

 

1978 Janice & Jim Honeymoon Camping Trip

 

I had heard about this fine old wooden schooner.

The reason is that more than one person had mentioned it too me as it was one of the few schooners left that had been designed by William Hand, a naval architect in the United States. The reason it had been referenced to me more than once is that my boat, En Plein Air is a William Hand designed powersailer with a pilot house design. There are only a handful of these boats left on the planet.  This Naval Architect William Hand was much like the architect Charles Rennie MacIntosh in Glasgow who when designing a building, would also design the crown molding, baseboards, casing and backband, windows and lots of little details like little nooks for books or space for a vase of flowers and the furniture for the place.

 

 

 

She is a 1925 gaff rigged schooner, but looks like she was just built. And that’s because of the magnitude of the refit she just went through. Her owners offer sailing charters in the winter in Key West and in the summer in Provincetown.  On her way north during the pandemic at about 3:30 in the morning she hit a submerged keel boat and did significant damage. During the pandemic a lot of owners of large keel boats that were financed were sunk to collect the insurance. The owner of this one had created the holes in the hull and air chambers to make her sink but had neglected to put holes in the water tanks and sewage tanks, that were partially filled with air, so when the keel boat “sank” it was only to just below the surface and when the Hindu hit it might have well been running aground for all the damage done.

So after a long time, and considerable cost  the Hindu is better than ever and has a new lease on life.

I love the fact that in this crazy complex and huge world, there are some things that just continue to have ties to other places, times and experiences and it is those connections that make them all the more significant to us.

Django

 

 

P.S. Just as I was posting this, I got an email from my buddy Jim who is now back in Canada from Key west but wanted to tell me that  he and Janice went out for a sunset cruise on the HINDU, just  a few days before they left the island, for the drive home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think it was particularly poignant  for them because with Trumps declaration of economic war with Canada they will be challenged by the question of whether to return to Key West, a place they love and have friends who are important to them.

QUILTING MEMORIES AND MEMORY QUILTS

POSTED: APRIL 1, 2025

Regular readers of my little posts may recall that last August I did a post on Tulip, the Dutch Sheep Dog who was part of Janice and Jims family and who passed last summer.

Tuli had been a wonderful part of the family and at one point in the grieving process last August their daughter Jade came up with the idea of making quilts from Tuli’s scarves. To some this may sound like an ill-conceived plan, but not in this circumstance. You see as a very long-haired dog, grooming (brushing out that long hair) is necessary every week, so fifteen years ago when they decided to get another long haired type, Janice and Jim contracted with a local groomer to bring her in every week. Most weeks would just be a brush out and every two or three weeks would be the more complete “spa day”. LOL.

The groomer they chose had a policy that any dog in for grooming regardless of the type of service, would go home with a little scarf around their neck. A nice treat for a pup who occasionally goes to the groomer. But in Tulips case, even with them going south for a few months in the winter, where that Key West groomer did not put scarves on the dogs, fourteen years of weekly scarves creates a lot of fabric. And of course, its not just fabric, they were scarves that Tuli would wear and that family members would have memories of her.

But lots of fabric scarves don’t make a quilt without some effort. That pursuit is one that Janice, who studied fashion design, had her own fashion label and continues to have textile art as part of her art practice, has down. She had made many quilts in the past and vintage quilt patterns are ones that have been part of her inspiration for her painted pieces. She does abstractions of quilt patterns with acrylic paint on Baltic birch panels or vintage ironing boards.

So they set off to learn to make quilts with their mom. They both had a background in art and design but neither of them had ever used a sewing machine or learned any textile art techniques. From August to December 2024 they worked away on their quilts every Sunday with their mom while Jim would work on dinner and get them coffee and help out where needed. The process had much in common with an Irish Wake. As they would work on their quilts the stories of Tuli’s life would spill out, some with laughter, some with tears.

By late December when Janice and Jim packed up to go to Key West the quilt tops (the detailed part) of each of their quilts were finished and all that remained was for them to start up on the project in the spring when their parents would make it back to Toronto.

But parallel with this exercise Janice was doing one of her own. It started much later than Jade and Jason as in the early weeks she was teaching them techniques, but by the middle of autumn Janice was at it full time, hoping to finish in time to enter an art show in Key West.

That art show she has been in before, called From A Woman’s Hand.  It is held at the Custom House Museum, a fine old brick structure that is home today to a lot of key west historical art and memorabilia including a significant collection of Mario Sanchez Intaglio wood carvings. I will do a piece on that at some point.

So the quilt was finished and lovingly packed up for the trip south and shortly after arriving she learned the judges had liked it and it would be in the show, running from Mid January into April. Here are some images from the show.

Custom House Museum, Key West

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Django.

TULIP

POSTED: August 1, 2024

Last months post The Rose Garden was notionally about roses, but it was really about relationships, and this post is only sort of about a Tulip. You see Tulip is my friends Janice and Jims dog. As a family Janice, Jim, Jade and Jason have had a lot of pets: finches, canaries, love birds, a rabbit, lots of tropical fish and three dogs. While each of these have special places in their hearts and memories, the attachment to their dogs has been significant. I think this is pretty normal for dog owners.

Their first dog, Scamp, was something of a rescue. He was advertised as free to a good home by a family who could no longer care for him and there was quite the stream of people interested but Janice and Jim were the lucky recipients of this middle-aged cockapoo. Scamp lived for many years and was a big part of their lives, largely before they had kids. Scamp went to work with Janice at her fashion design business each day.

Then later, when the kids were young, Paddington, a big male Bearded Collie came along. If Disney designed a dog this would be it. Long brown shaggy fur, and big enough to mean business (about 27 kilos or 60 pounds) but enough of a softie to leave with kids. Paddington, like scamp spent a lot of time with Janice at her art studio, and then with Jim when he retired early. At fourteen he passed.

When Paddington passed it was not clear that Janice and Jim would get another dog. There was a big hole in their hearts and they were not about to artificially try to fill it with another pet. Then one day Janice posed the question – are we never going to get another dog? Jims fast response was that no, he would not say that. This led to the debate about just how old they would consider be prepared to care for a dog. Shortly thereafter they were on the lookout for another pup.

That pup, was Tulip.

Tulip acquired that name because as a Shapendoes, or Dutch Sheepdog, it seemed appropriate for her cultural heritage and her short form TULI was quickly adopted.

Tuli came along when the kids were university age. We tend to think of pets being significant to little kids, and of course they are, but for young adults they are equally important. Tuli has seen Jade and Jason through job changes, partners, different housing, tragedies and triumphs. Along the way a bit of Covid was thrown in of course.

When I first started writing this little piece I had thought I would do a bit of a chronology of how this 13 kilogram (28 pound) dog affected all of their lives but no one wants to read tens of thousands of words – particularly on a computer screen, and especially written by me! Suffice it to say she was very loved and important part of their family and will be very missed.

I will let some pictures tell the story.

Django

 

 

 

NOT THE MOTHER’S DAY CALL I EXPECTED

POSTED: JUNE 1, 2024

Mother’s Day is a special time. We pull out the emotions we don’t show often enough and share them with the ones we love, or respect. Any regular readers of my posts will know I am not a dad and don’t have a partner or siblings. My Mothers Day experiences historically have been with my own mom and my grandmother. Both sadly passed many years ago. In recent times I have taken to calling those friends of mine I respect as moms just to tell wish them well and tell them I am thinking about them. I will often do it the day before, partially because of the time difference of my location Malta and many of them being in North America. It is also a day before the busy time of Mothers Day, and if the timing doesn’t work they call me back on their time and we can have a good chat. This was the case with my friend Janice who actually called me back the day after Mothers Day when she had more free time.

 

I know Janice pretty well, given she is the partner of my buddy Jim. Her Mothers Days always involve Jade and Jason over for the day, and often Jim makes a nice dinner and they do some things together. They do this every second Sunday so the significance of Mother’s Day is just that it is more focused on Janice than usual. This year, like others Jade always posts on social media an image of her and her mom doing something from when she was a kid. I always like that kind of remembrance as it brings to life the historical depth of the relationship. Also like some previous years Jade and Jason brought a number of flowers they thought their mom would like for the garden, perennials I think, and spent some time with their mom choosing the location and planting them.

 

 

 

But what was really on her mind, were some events that had happened during the week, largely involving Jim. I felt compelled to use the often-referenced quote of our high school principal when Jims name would come up “Oh, what has he done now?”

A few days before Mother’s Day he was planning his day around an outing to see his dental hygienist. He and Janice have a good relationship with Faye. She does a great job, and works in a very large and very good dental practice and they have been with for some time. It is a small world it seems as her grandfather started a major company making short helpful guides on various subjects for high school students. I used these guides myself.  Faye has a daughter and who is about nine and she and her partner are now expecting another baby. This is of particular interest to Jim has a sister who is nine years older than him and my other buddy Jim H. has a couple brothers, the youngest of which is also nine years older.  The dynamic of these siblings is always interesting to watch. There isn’t much competitiveness, as the age spread is so large its almost like having an aunt or uncle more than a sister or brother. Where there is jealousy its because by the time the younger one comes along the parents are now more mature and able to let the little stuff slide and they almost always are in a much better financial position so the family trips aren’t inexpensive camping trips in the car, but expensive trips to exotic locations and the meagre allowance has now become much more sizable.

Like me, Janice and Jim are getting older so need to have their teeth “detailed” as Jim says, about every four months so Jim had seen Faye just after she went public with her pregnancy and had a booking with her on her last day before her scheduled time for stopping work. While he was never really happy about his trips to the dental office this one he was looking forward to because he could get the final update on how things were progressing and the plans and wish her well.

It is with these thoughts that Jim was more than a bit put off when an event happened earlier in the day that put his dental outing at risk. Over breakfast he and Janice had watched a racoon come out from a patio table in their back garden that had not been uncovered from the winter and climb over a fence they share with a neighbour and head off to the neighbour’s yard. They were relieved to see she had left as it was Jims plan to uncover the table that day and start to do the spring yard work before his dental visit. He had just made his coffee and saw her return with a baby racoon in her mouth. Before he could collect his thoughts, she had crawled under the table cover with the little one. He called to Janice to come to see this but before Janice was out the mother racoon was off and over the fence again. This was not good. She was obviously relocating from where they had been born. Hopefully that was the entire family. Nope. The process continued for three more trips.

Janice is a very resourceful person and was on the phone with the municipal wildlife control people. They assured her that this was not their problem and that she should call a private wildlife control company. The answer there was not a very good one. Two different places she called were very clear that they could come and trap the mother and her kits, but that once they were released at a park the mother would bolt, the kits would be left on their own and either starve to death or be eaten by other animals. What the hell kind of mess had they fallen into here, they thought.

But one of the private wildlife people had made a good suggestion to encourage them to relocate to someplace in the yard that would not be so intrusive but still provide shelter and that would lead to the best possible outcome.

So once Jim saw the mom head out to get another one or to get food Jim took some gear and built them a little house in a corner of their yard.  It was an aluminum step ladder covered with a tarp and with a cardboard box below with little walls so the kits wouldn’t wander out. The next part I imagine was a bit scary. With some gloves on Jim gingerly opened the table cover to reveal the nest of babies and carried one of the little guys to the new home and went back for the next one. Once the cover on the existing nest under the patio table was exposed it was obvious there were six of them! One at time Jim did the gentle walk to their new home and placed them in the box. I was at number four when mom came back and hear the squealing from the new location and went under the tarp at the ladder house. There was no turning back now so Jim got the next one and brought it to within a few meters of their new home and set it down and went back for another. Thankfully mom heard its squealing and after making sure Jim had left came out and picked it up with her mouth and took it to the new nest. They repeated this routine until the job was done. On one of Jims trips to the drop point Janice snapped this photo. Their little eyes were not even open at that point!

 

While the drama of this was all pretty interesting Jim was at a terrible risk of not making his dental detailing appointment and called to tell the clinic he was on his way and would not be characteristically early but might even be a few minutes late. Apparently, someone had forgotten to call him to say that the appointment would need to be rescheduled with another hygienist at a future time as Faye had gone into labour and been rushed to the hospital. She and her baby boy were doing fine he was told.

Other than caring for their elderly dog Tuli, Janice and Jim have a life these days that is quite quiet and does not have big events, or even little events to liven it up much so this had been quite the day. The new nest was quite a novelty for the next few days but then there was no action around it at all. They were getting a bit stressed that she might have abandoned the nest altogether and on Mother’s Day morning gingerly pulled back part of the tarp hoping to not see a number of dead baby racoons. Nope. Nothing. Mom had relocated them to somewhere safer.

That night having a nice mothers day dinner they could hear the mom and her kits making noise from their new nest in a nearby park.

It was not the Mother’s Day conversation I thought I would have but it made my day.

Love you mom.

Django

MYSTERY SOUP

POSTED: APRIL 1, 2024

Just about year ago today I got a call from Janice. Now regular readers will know that I have a good relationship with Janice but my real history with Janice and Jim is with my buddy Jim I went to elementary school with and then high school, and after that toured around Europe with. So, getting a call from Janice instantly puts me on edge, sure that some terrible thing has happened to have her pick up the phone at a strategic hour to span a few time zones from Toronto to Malta. I was relieved to hear it was nothing like a health scare.

She was gearing up to make a nice meal for Jim and over a period of time heard a couple of people mention a soup that she had never heard of but thought it would be interesting to try as she and Jim really like soups of all kinds. I think it is the northern climate thing, where warm and cozy foods and beverages are comforting on a cool, cold or damp day. Soups, stews, hot chocolate, tea, coffee all do the job after digging cars out of snowbanks, shoveling snow, skating or skiing.

She had been all over the internet and could not find it and thought that with my history working in kitchens that I might have a lead on it or be able to reach out to some of my friends who are chefs, cooks, or otherwise working with food.

Square soup. Yeah, square soup. No, I had never heard of it but would put out some feelers with a bunch of chefs I had worked with over the years. Janice knew that having worked in the kitchens of cruise ships, I have a long list of friends all over the world who still work in kitchens, some as chefs, some as cooks, some bar and restaurant owners and some just working to survive. It took the better part of a day to get a number of responses as they reflected a lot of different time zones – Asia, America, New Zealand, Europe, Africa,  mid Pacific and mid Atlantic. Most of the responses were the same, (other than the personal updates) “nope – never heard of it”.

After spending a lot of time on this I was frustrated to not have something more definitive but sent her the two leads I had come up with.

The first was Square Meal Soup from a girl I had worked with who today was involved in a little restaurant in Reykjavik. It is a stew of meat and vegetables and potatoes or other root vegetables. It sounded like a pretty flavorful meal in a bowl and I have enjoyed some with these ingredients myself.  Nope that was not it.

My second one I knew would probably even be further off the mark: Square Grouper Soup. Now this one is not well known and is a local joke in the Florida Keys. When people would smuggle in bales of marijuana by boat and coast guard officials would come up to the “fishermen” to ask what they were catching they would often respond  Grouper, but then when the official would leave, joke about the bales of marijuana they had thrown overboard as Square Grouper. Square Grouper Soup is a soup made with seaweed. I know that does not sound appealing but there are some very tasty, and nutrient rich seaweeds out there, and when cooked in a soup all look like marijuana.

Nope that was not it she assured me.

SQUARE SOUP

She did however say she had a lead on it and would get back to me later in the day.

So just after midnight on April 1st she sent an email with the following recipe and picture and hoped I would enjoy my first day of April.

 

SQUARE SOUP RECIPE

INGREDIENTS:   You can use almost any vegetable you like, as well as various meats, seasonings etc.  Really there are no limitations.

STYLE: Consommé’s, broths, cream soups, bisques, chowders…again,  its pretty wide open.

VESSEL: This is the key. In contrast to the traditional bowl, designed for a spoon to hug each arc of a conventional soup bowl,                             square soup needs to be served in a square container.

 

Django

 

P.S. Just a few little shout-outs to:

Salute On The Beach,

1000 Atlantic Blvd, Key West, Florida  Salute! On The Beach | Key West, Florida (saluteonthebeach.com)

Square Grouper Bar and Grill

22658 Overseas Hwy, Cudjoe Key, FL               https://squaregrouperbarandgrill.com/

Matarkjallarinn  (The Food Cellar)  Adalstraeti 2, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Home – Food Cellar (matarkjallarinn.is)

 

LOST & FOUND

POSTED: December 1, 2023

I really like public buildings that are on a human scale. It doesn’t matter if they are schools or municipal buildings or hospitals. The key element for me is that they are of a size that is big enough to get the job done but small enough that they are very much the vessels for the activity, and not that the structures are so large that the structure itself is the primary focus. I posted recently about my experience with a young woman named Ofra (posted November 1st). Most of my experience with her was at a small hospital here in Valletta, Malta and it consisted of waiting in a fairly small area to find out the outcome of her medical problem and to help her back to her temporary accommodations.

I was there for many hours overnight and the whole adventure was unplanned so I had not taken a book or even reading glasses, my phone or any other distractions so the space I was in became quite familiar after a few hours. The window was close by and I could look out but it was nighttime and not much to see. I was reminded of my buddy Jim’s story about his uncle Gordon in a setting like this. Now Jim’s uncle was a character, and I think became even more of a character in Jim’s recollections of him but one story that came to mind here was that Jim’s Nana (grandmother) was in a small village hospital on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river valley, in Canada. The region, while part of Quebec, a largely French speaking province, was inhabited primarily by people with an English speaking heritage, largely from Ireland, and many of them farmed or went into Ottawa for employment.

So his Nana was in the hospital for one thing or another, and Uncle Gordon thought it would be a grand gesture to fly by in his little airplane and waive at her. For most of us, this initial plan would quickly be discarded as the small community hospital was still a busy place with lots of activities of people coming and going. Beyond this, airplanes are noisy things. In those days (the 1960’s) the small size of this little one-seater plane sounded more like a loud lawnmower than any smooth running aircraft and it might occur to most that some people in the hospital would want some calm and quiet.  But Uncle Gordon did not have the same decision making process as the rest of us and saw the flight and waving as a good plan. He was also not deterred by the fact that there were lots of electrical wires running from the poles around the building to the top of the five-storey structure – he would just fly under them. Yeah. Really. What a plan.

Well he did pull it off but in so doing lost his flying license in Canada. He did keep his flying license elsewhere however, and continued to fly around the United States and the Caribbean. YIKES.

As I sat there in the waiting area, the small commissary was close. Too close.  It had a very limited range of products during busy hours and only vending machines in the less busy hours when I was there.  It made for tough decisions for me with my efforts  to manage my hypertension – death by sugar overload? Carb overload? Fat overload? Some of the products in those venting machines liberally satisfied all three and with a lot of sodium in there for good measure as well.

I couldn’t leave to go elsewhere for a coffee or some fruit as I did not know when they would release her and at that hour there would probably not be anything very close by.  It was my first time pretending to a be a dad and I really did not want to screw it up. To keep my mind off my hungry stomach I tried to focus on some other things and one was right there within sight. It was a small cabinet with a rather ancient sign LOST & FOUND.  Now these lost and found cabinets, tables, or bookshelves in small facilities are quite the stimulus for anyone with an imagination. In some cases, the objects on display there look like they truly have been lost and would have some value, at least sentimental value,  to someone. In other cases they look like items that are not worth retracing steps for – a paperback book, beat up baseball cap, or satchel that probably was just abandoned. But other things truly looked like they were just waiting for their owners to come back through the door to reunite with.

This notion of LOST and FOUND really got me thinking at the time. I had nothing but time on my hands sitting in that waiting area, and was desperate to not think about the vending machines.

In general LOST is a negative. You might lose your way, or lose in a game. None of us like losing things, but there are some very noteworthy exceptions. Sometimes the loss of ones virginity is a negative, sometimes a positive. Most often the loss of body weight is a good thing, but sometimes if its due to a medical problem a bad thing. A friends mother was losing her memory from dementia and that was really bad, but one day went swimming as she had lost (forgotten) her fear of water. Damn, this lost business is complex.

I was petty sure that FOUND was a positive however as I began to muse about it at about 4 am. We all love finding stuff. A bit of cash in a jacket we do not often wear or finding the right partner. But what happens when we find the partner in bed with someone else, find a lump where it shouldn’t be, or find we have been scammed out of our life savings. I guess found is not universally a good thing either.

I had a few chats with others who were waiting, walked around a bit, read parts of a paper that had been left, and eventually broke down and ate a bar that had the promising name of  “only protein”. It tasted pretty good. So did the second one. The wrapper I sheepishly read after eating two of these killers:  yes, there was protein but also 12 grams of fat and 9 grams of sugar. And I had consumed two! Well, no use beating myself up over it.

As I was looking at the ingredient list on the little package when the doctor came out to tell me the news on Ofra, and my time at the hospital would soon come to an end.

I have since done a lot of walking, am back on my good diet and have generally redeemed myself for those two killer protein (and everything else) bars.

The notions of Lost and Found however, like my memories of that experience with Ofra have lingered with me.  Most stuff of life has a crazy combination of simple and complex and I seem to spend a lot of my time these days trying to sort out the two.

Django

 

ISOBEL & VERA

Posted: November 1, 2022

This week I was writing a nice post about my friend Gabrielle who has been working on a really neat wood carving. But yesterday I sat down to write about two models instead. Now before you get all wound up thinking that I am going to talk about my relationship with two supermodels, I should clarify that my topic here is not about that. Nor is it about car models I used to build as kid.

Its about two role models. When I was growing up my buddy Jim, the focus of much of my writing on this website had an amazing aunt, Vera Preston. My other buddy James (he was once a Jim as well) had a pretty cool mom, Isobel Hale.

What has sparked my writing this today is that Isobel passed on October 15th. She was born on August 28, 1919, and yes, your math is correct, that’s over 103 years old. That in itself is a rather significant feat. But the real story is what her life was and how she managed it. As one of six children in that family and growing up in several small communities in Saskatchewan and Ontario in that era, it must have been a stimulating time with so much changing in technology and society, especially with five siblings! But later when raising her own children at a time when mothers were to stay home, she was running a nursery school and growing a body of knowledge about early childhood education. That experience she went on to share and became a portion of the foundation for much of what we know today about how young minds think and how to help them grow.

Now Vera Preston was the aunt of my other buddy Jim. She was of the same era as Isobel, being born in 1916 and lived to 2004. Like Isobel, Vera grew up in a modest house in a small Ontario village. Unlike Isobel, she did not have children or marry, but was dedicated to her work. In her case, it was nursing. She went through the nursing program at Brockville General Hospital, and after distinguishing herself in that coursework and as a nurse went on to be the Director of Nursing at Brockville General and an important part of what later became the Nursing Program at St. Lawrence College.

What struck me this week is how similar both of these women were in both their personal traits and in their dedication to various causes. They grew up at a time when the only occupations open to most women were teaching and nursing and while each chose one of those very defined fields for women, they were able to not only excel at the task but move the professions forward.

And again, as they aged, in a very similar way, they both went on to teach, to participate in various boards and causes. This was not because there was an artificial goal of equality in gender representation on those boards but because they could bring important ideas, experience and insight to the table. In her later years Isobel evolved her relationship with children to designing kids clothes and Vera to more medical related charity work.

Both had a very wry sense of humour, and a restrained response to bad decision making or the behaviour of others. As a generator of serious “tomfoolery”, “shenanigans”, and outright “mischief” myself, I always knew each of these women would have a measured response to my behaviour in contrast to most adults I would encounter.

I am sorry I did not know either of them better. I would love to have asked if the experience of Vera watching her farmer father die of pneumonia while working the field, set her on the course to pursue nursing or the experience of Isobel in a large family watching her younger siblings learn and process new information set her on her path to early childhood education.

There is no better a tribute than to say it was a privilege to have known these two woman, at least a little, and that I am a better person for it. At a time when we are rethinking the statues of big men, these two small women stand pretty tall in my memory.

Django

MUGGING

POSTED: August 1, 2022

I really love Malta. It is a great place that I have adopted and many of my posts reference how nice it is. But its not perfect and like most of the world there are times when… well, shit happens.

Such was the case last week when an older woman, Isla, who lives on an old vessel in our marina was out later at night and confronted by a young woman on a scooter who tried to steel her bag. In so doing she did not get the bag but did knock Isla. She incurred a few multiple fractures from the event when she tried to regain her balance she fell over a high curb.

The marina community has rallied to help her with her chores and some financial help and I have taken over some prepared meals.

But the community has also taken to talking about their various encounters with people who attempt to rob others, and are prepared to get into a physical confrontation in doing so. The experience is quite traumatic for most of us and the effects linger for some time, even if we were not physically hurt or financially impacted by such an event.

One such experience sticks in my mind from when I was just out of high school. As regular readers know it has only been in the last year that I have connected with my old high school friends and only a few years since reconnecting with Jim. If you are not familiar with that aspect of this website you should read the ABOUT section.

But back in the spring of 1974, it was less than a year since graduating high school and I was still very much in touch with many of them and was off and on living in South Florida with a bunch of people as I was working on a cruise line that went out of there. My buddy Jim had contacted me in early March to see if I would be around as he was contemplating a trip to Ft. Lauderdale over university spring break coming up in a week.

The trip, like most things that happened to people like Jim and me and most of our friends had come together quickly and with not a lot of preparation.  The background is that Jim and another high school buddy Bo had really enjoyed their photography hobby through high school. Bo was off to college for it and Jim as teaching a rudimentary, non- credit course in it to pay for university. So with a few bucks in his Jeans from that job and doing some freelance work for UPI, the wire service that bought photographs from freelancers like him, he had been saving to go to New York to the camera district and buy a Nikon F2 Photomic. At the time, unless you were going to mid or large format cameras like Rolleiflex,  Hasselblad or Linhof, this camera was one of the best in the small thirty five millimeter film format.

Now sometimes a variety of things just come together as if they were meant to be. His girlfriend at the time had made the decision to fly to Ft. Lauderdale with a few of her girlfriends for the spring break. At the same time Greyhound, the American bus company had announced a new promotional programme. For $99 you could have unlimited travel on Greyhound busses throughout North America for seven days. Jim figured he could take the bus at midnight to NYC, spend the day shopping for the camera, then get on another bus heading out late at night for an all-nighter and much of the next day on the bus as well to get to Ft. Lauderdale. He would have a few days there with his girlfriend, see me and then get back on the bus in time to make it back to Ottawa within the seven days.

There were other motivations as well. This girlfriend was a bit of wild card and not super predictable. He thought that her time in Ft. Lauderdale would be quite the messy business.

So the plan was hatched, the Greyhound pass purchased, and Jim was off to the Big Apple.

Today NYC is a fairly safe, major city but in the 1970’s this was classic Gotham. Hoods and gangs roamed the streets. The police, city officials, some ambulance services and most of the public had given up large portions of the city to drug dealers and gangs. It is hard to believe today.

The fourteen hours overnight to New York worked out but left him a big groggy for the wheeling and dealing that went on in the camera shops of the day in the Camera District. People would bump into each other at the counter and there was a lot of haggling and brinksmanship etc. They sold lots of new gear but the haggling really came to the fore when a purchaser would bring in a piece or two of used gear. The best deals happened on buying a new camera where there was very little flexibility on price, when combined with trading in something used, or buying something used in addition to the new camera. The used equipment aspect attracted lots of questionable characters and sometimes purchasers were vendors and haggling with people behind the counter or beside them at the counter with something to sell or trade.

As Jim tells it one huge fellow who looked like Samuel L. Jackson on steroids, wearing black jeans and sweater and a long black leather cape who was pretty loaded down with gear dropped one of his cameras and Jim happened to be right there and caught it. No big thank you or shaking of hands or anything, just a nod. If you are from Ottawa this is not the amount of recognition you would usually receive for such a fortuitous catch, but it was New York and when in Rome….  The guy behind the counter told him to check to see he still had all his gear as sometimes one person distracts you while another picks your pocket. Nope, he had it all, but when he looked around the huge guy with the cape was not to be seen.

The buy went off without a problem and after walking around Jim found himself Uptown. It was late afternoon and the sun was retreating quickly and he thought he might get a chance to see the Apollo theatre before heading back to the bus station.  But as he walked and the sun withdrew the park started its evening shift. Guys were appearing from almost nowhere and they were in little groups of two and three. This was not going to go well, and he wisely tucked his new prize camera into his coat as he picked up the pace to get closer to the parks edge where he could see there were more passersby.  But his timing was all wrong and a few of the little groups had become larger and it was very clear that it was not only the loss of the camera that would be at risk.

But just as quicky as the strange falling camera events had unfolded in Downtown Camera, the guy with the cape strolled along and asked if he knew where he was. “Uptown… wanted to see the Apollo… Jim struggled to get the words out. “You’re a dead white kid in Harlem” was the low octave reply. But as he spoke, he asked “are you the one who caught my Leica in the store? ..you all look the same to me”. After establishing that yes, he was in fact that spindly white kid who had done the big camera catch, they walked together out of the park while sharing a couple of thoughts on photography. Well as Jim tells it he was chattering nervously and there was little said in response. And then after a pause as Jim turned to thank him the expanse of black leather cape moving into the subway was all Jim saw of angel.

He caught his bus, and after about another twenty hours of bus ride to Ft. Lauderdale stopping to drop off and pick up along the way, he made it to the address his girlfriend was staying at. It was clear to him pretty quickly that they were no longer together and her interest was elsewhere. I had been called up for a cruise on an unscheduled basis as someone had quit so we didn’t connect either. He didn’t have anywhere to stay and little money. I understand it was a long bus ride home for him.

My direct experience with this kind of perilous world of muggers and beatings was more recent.

Regular readers of my posts know that early in the Pandemic I went to Ireland to have a chat with a lad who was the ex-husband of my captain, Ciara. I did not say a lot about that in earlier posts and I won’t say much more here as it was a fairly unsavoury experience for all concerned.  But in my efforts to find the fellow I had not realized just a how tight the communities are in rural Ireland. If you walk into a village pub and are not recognized you might as well as be wearing a Bugs Bunny costume as the stares will be the same. If you then ask someone behind the bar if they know where to find a particular person you are quickly sized up and determined to be a long lost relative from America, which is not the best, or someone looking for another purpose, which of course is worse. You are also measured in terms of the quality of the person you are looking for. If it is any sort of low life scoundrel you are put in the same category. This was the case here of course.

So when the woman behind the bar told me he wasn’t around much, but that she would ask around and served me my pint, she gave me one of those piercing looks like film directors like to capture that cut out about a few hundred words of dialogue. I had two addresses of his relatives and decided to head off to find one of them before it got too late in the day. It was only mid afternoon but the two lads who met me as I stepped out to the street had been waiting. After a dialogue over why I was looking for their brother it was clear that they were not there to help. It didn’t help my case asking them to repeat some of their questions as if I needed a switch for close captioning to understand them.

I did not see the first punch coming. It was to the area not in my back but on my side just behind my stomach. Two of these guys were really not needed. One could have beaten me up on his own. But after falling over and catching myself on the stone wall of the pub, I nervously blurted out something stupid. “Well I guess if I have some super powers I am not familiar with, this would be a good time for them to kick in wouldn’t it.” They both looked stunned for a moment and then started to laugh uncontrollably. They both had gone through a lot of beer that afternoon I expect and I thought one of them might piss himself or have a heart attack they were so out of control in their laughter. And then after looking behind me and seeing we were being joined by a few people leaving the pub they sort of ran and stumbled away.

After a bit of searching, I found where I was going and did my business with Ciara’s ex.

I got off pretty easy on that one. The psychological effects of the actual meeting I had were worse. And that is a common result of these assaults, or attempted robberies. We are not as comfortable being out around people, we often look at strangers with more suspicion. It is a bad combination with aging where we are sometimes more reticent to get into any conflict.

My neighbour in the marina who was knocked down is certainly shaken, but she seems like a fairly resilient sort. Isla was from Utrecht originally. She is old enough to be my mom. She came here originally with her partner who was not well and has now passed and has lived on a boat for the last couple of decades so I am think she has some serious inner strength. I think she will be ok.

Django

THE EARLY MORNING PANIC CALL

Posted: July 1, 2022

We all dread the call in the middle of the night. As we move to respond and open our eyes we make up stories about what it could be about.  A loved one who is ill ….a friend in trouble…. It amazes me how many fast thoughts you can process in just a second or two. I think this conditioning is normal. Its way out of the ordinary to get a call at some ungodly hour so it must be important. And not the good version of important.

But in my case both my parents and my grandparents have passed. I don’t have siblings or children, so it has to relate to a friend. While a have a lot of friends and acquaintances I don’t have very many friends I am so close to that they would be calling at this hour. That I think is partially because I am a Canadian and living in Malta so if it was one of my friends in Toronto or Ottawa, I am not really in a position to help them get to the hospital, or to post bail in Montreal. And anyone having a problem in the middle of the night in Malta that I know well enough to be soliciting help would just rap on the hull of the boat. I looked over and Ciera was in the bed sleeping (she sometimes comes into my room for company) and looking out a porthole I did not see any special lights on.

So, in that few seconds of processing time, I concluded it would be my buddy Jim calling from Toronto. This time of year, the spread is six hours so at 4:54 am it was only 10:34 pm the night before in Toronto. That timing is fairly consistent with his questionable timing in calling me. If this remained true to previous calls of this type, he would have had a glass of wine or two and be exceedingly stressed about something. Previous all time great calls have been about Trump, the mistreatment of indigenous people in Canada, Justin Trudeau in Blackface and similar topics. I have documented this behaviour before – check out my post on September 2019, for example.

The phone was on its second ring and as I picked it up, I was already processing the topics of the day that when combined with a nice bottle of Amarone might generate such a call: Putin and the war in Ukraine, mass killings of kids in American schools and the lack of gun control…… My imagination was interrupted when the call connected.

Yes, indeed I was correct and yes, two for two, he was intoxicated and sure enough he had some big thoughts on his mind. But unlike previous calls where it is a big issue of the day that has him incensed, enraged or otherwise stimulated, this time his tone, while still with slurred speech as usual for these calls, was more subdued. “I have done something really crazy” he began.

Now beyond these unscheduled late-night / early morning calls I chat with Jim regularly at normal hours. Usually, it is during his mid afternoon so it is after my chores making dinner for Malcolm, Martha, Gerhardt and Gabrielle, Ceira and myself or by email. So when he said this I knew instantly the range of craziness it might encompass. Janice and Jim have had many lives and relationships but they have all been with each other. They change things up every now and again and evolve into new activities, businesses or pursuits but always seem to be able to do it together. I envy them that ability to change their lives but go off on the adventure together.  In some of my recent chats it has become clear that Jim in particular is really chomping at the bit do try something new, and half jokes about restoring a lighthouse on Prince Edward Island or restoring an old Airstream trailer and with Janice and their dog Tuli going on a road for a year. But these are the kinds of things they have always done – a record label, a cooking school, Janice going to grad school in her sixties, so would not be characterized as “crazy”.

In that moment I processed the other things he has chatted about recently. Over the pandemic, like much of the world they have watched a lot of films on the various platforms out there. And like most the spectrum of what they have watched has broadened. Some of it is a bit dark and I have heard him muse more than once about Ozark and what it might be like to deal with a Mexican drug lord, or what it would be like to kill someone.

“Have you taken up money laundering” I quietly asked.

There was a pause.

“No, but something equally questionable” he responded.

My mind was now fully engaged and racing. What the hell had he done? Ciera was now up and making coffee for me so I could be equipped for the ensuing trauma.

Well, it turns out that he had not killed anyone, Janice was not laundering drug money, or any of the other things that I had imagined. No, it turns out he had bought a jerk marinade and cooked up some pork and used the mixture rather generously. To hear him tell it Janice’s head spun around, steam came out of her ears and his lips looked like he was just back from a Botox convention.

My hopelessly whitebread buddy had spiced up a dish too much and this was the crisis!!!

It is not the first time my imagination had run ahead of me. I don’t know if it is age or the pandemic but I have noticed that the risks or possible negative outcomes or anxieties bubble up more often than in the past.

Ciera and I enjoyed our coffees on the upper deck looking over the other boats, listening to the sail lines singing and watching the sunrise and sharing a chuckle over my buddy who gets a sunburn when walking by neon lights and who was feeling he might need be hospitalized over the spiciness of a jerk sauce.

Django

 

TORONTO ART.ca

POSTED: FEB 1, 2022

For some time you have heard me chatter on about meaning to get to writing up a couple of sections on this website. The two in particular that I have been really bad at getting to are The Chef Upstairs, and TorontoART.ca

Well at least for The Chef Upstairs I introduced the topic in some detail in a post on July 7, 2020 about the bombing at Kings Cross in London that Janice and Jim had been involved in. No, they didnt set the bomb- they were just in the tube at Kings Cross when it went off.

But the TorontoART.ca website section has been one I have avoided. While it was a massive part of my buddy Jim’s life it had a lot of moving parts and I was not clear that I could do it justice. That is partially because it had six hundred members and whenever one would contact Jim to ask if there will be any write up he would forward me the emails.

So here we are in 2022 and I am dedicated to getting into better shape, getting a few of my short stories published and grabbing the bull by the horns on some of these tasks that I have procrastinated on.

So check out the new section TorontoART.ca in the tabs and you can see what I have done so far. As there were about six hundred active members on the site I am not going to put in images of all of them but have started with putting in some to get rolling and will be working on adding more artists images over time.  This of course is a classic procrastinators commitment.

Django