Kung Fu Fighting, chicken style
When good turkeys turn bad. . .
Stereophonic suit poop.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Tiny angels, Christmas angels
Oh my, oh my. Went to my granddaughter Erica's Christmas concert this afternoon - she appeared, grave and serious, in a gorgeous black-and-tartan dress worn several times by the girls in our family (a sort of heirloom now), singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town with graceful gestures that seemed almost Polynesian. She looked shockingly beautiful up there, and grown up.
So afterwards I went for coffee with my son's Mum-in-law, which I haven't for a while and enjoyed immensely. She insisted on giving us a beautiful potted poinsettia-and-white-flowers mix that will probably bloom lavishly in a day or two. Then came home to make chili, which I had planned to do yesterday and just ran out of time.
I don't enjoy cooking, even if I love the result, so I wondered what would make it go down better (besides that fizzy grapefruit drink I am so addicted to now, Dole Sparklers they're called). I thought, hmmm, let's put some Christmas music on! I haven't intentionally listened to a Christmas album yet this year. My hand just gravitated to Roger Whittaker, though my rational self was saying, "Margaret, NOT that sentimental old thing again."
Oh yes.
This was, in fact, a sort of test. I've tried to write about the spiritual meltdown I've experienced over the past several years, the fact that my entire belief system seems to have been blown to bits. Do I still believe in, well - God, or something like God?
Might it be a bit of a test to listen to this song, this song that always made me cry when my children were small?
This song that still made me cry last year? Was I so dried up, so hard-hearted, had I turned my face away from Love and Grace and all those things that used to hold my life together so much that my tears had turned as hard and crystalline as Lot's wife?
Friends, I cried. Did I cry! I bawled. It was wonderful, soul-rocking. I don't know what it is, perhaps just the way he sings it, and the deep truth of this: the only gifts that I could want are you. My darlings.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
Christmas blues: the gaiety of grief
Dylan
Thomas was once quoted as saying, “There is no gaiety so gay as the gaiety of
grief.”
Somehow
I sort of know what that means, though I can’t explain it.
Yesterday
I was making gingerbread cookies with the grandkids (having had to throw out
the entire first attempt at dough, so stinking horrible from the molasses that
we ended up throwing it at the wall), and more or less feeling OK, but it was
an effort. I had to pull myself up for it. For the first few days after my
mother-in-law’s passing, I was laden with memories, great waves of memory
breaking on the sand, so deep that they went back to when I was a girl of
eighteen.
I
said to someone I am close to, I have no bad memories of her, and she said to
me, that’s because you didn’t see her that often. This is the way we “deal with”
grief now. A kind of slamming of the door. Put up or shut up, she was 96 and
had her life and a peaceful death, so just forget about it and get on with the
cookies.
It’s
hard.
Hard
this time of year, which is hard already, for reasons I can’t even begin to
probe. Of course the child in me loves
the sparkle and twinkling lights and angels and good food and having the family
around. But I don’t know of a family that is universally loveable.
A
family without tensions and trouble.
I
feel over-grandma’d these days. It’s not that I don’t love it. I feel stretched
thin sometimes, and I’m not even supposed to feel it, let alone acknowledge it.
Everything I do seems to disappear into a black hole, leaving no trace.
I
suppose my line of work is a factor. People don’t see me as “working”, in spite
of writing six novels, 350-some book reviews, thousands of newspaper columns,
dozens of published poems (and two anthologies), essays in text books, and
serving as a juror in several competitions. It all just kind of vaporizes as it
happens, and I know I am seen as “not working”.
In fact, people’s attitude probably mirrors that of a woman I knew
(hardly a friend) who said, once my kids were both in school, “Goodness,
Margaret, what on earth are you going to do with yourself all day?” (I was
writing a novel.)
On
the other hand, why should I expect them to understand? Margaret Atwood was
once famously quoted as saying, “I can’t be fired because I don’t have a job.”
I don’t either, though I have work. I even have paid work, the steady if
not too thick income from my beloved alma mater, the Edmonton
So
if you’re paid for it, even if only an honorarium (meaning, a chintzy cheque),
doesn’t that make you a professional?
YES.
But it’s so much more than that.
This
post was once another post, and I cut the second half because it was becoming
just too bleak. Having a death in the family right at Christmas is hard.
Already you’re assaulted by waves of memory that are beyond your control. But
these layers run very deep and no doubt stir up my complete estrangement from
my family of origin.
Okay,
the “Sisters” post was me. No one saw it anyway, or only a few. And as usual,
the person who needed to see it didn’t, or wouldn’t have cared even if she did.
So I had a sort of adoptive family when I got married, but didn’t really realize it for years and years. It grew slowly and without my awareness. Alliances have surged and faded, beyond my power to choose. (Do we choose to love? “Gee, I think I’ll love this person now. Stand back.”) There has been a sort of evolution. Now the lynch-pin has been withdrawn by the natural course of things. We will have to regroup. It remains to be seen who the new matriarch will be.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
Monday, December 5, 2011
Coronet Blue: Candy and David and Jon and Frank
This is an odd little clip. I can't find out much about Coronet Blue because there are only fragments on YouTube. I probably never even watched it, but I do remember that catchy theme song. And Frank Converse, pretty dishy, wasn't he? How old would he be now, or is he even alive? These actors, so fresh-faced, so pretentious in putting on those unplaceable hey-man accents, are now either dead, or all shrivelled up with age.
No doubt, like me, they thought youth would go on forever. No doubt, like me, they thought that the '60s had changed things, really changed things forever, and that it would never go back.
Hey, man. We tried.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
CORONET BLUE: no, I didn't dream this!
This is one of those TV shows that I thought I'd made up or dreamed about. Turns out it was on for one season or something. I'll have to dredge up a clip I found with a whole lot of famous people in it, like Candace Bergen, who weren't famous yet. Oh those summers in Chatham - not such a remarkable place, but I look back on it with such sweetness, the choking humidity, the ferocious thunderstorms at dusk, sleeping over at my girl friend's, or sleeping in the pullout bed in the den watching old reruns of Topper and Love That Bob.
Coronet Blue came at the crest of the cool wave of '60s spy shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Secret Agent, and even Get Smart. (I also found T. H. E. Cat, which I was SURE I had dreamed up.) I don't remember much of it except I think there was an English guy in it, some kind of sidekick. And something about going to a concert, and at the intermission having "one of those insipid orange drinks". Why do we remember such useless fragments?
And whatever happened to Frank Converse, Mr. Dishy himself? He was such a long tall glass of intoxicating water. Then he sort of disappeared. T. H. E., whom I didn't remember was Robert Loggia, sort of disappeared too, into character acting, but by then he was a different person altogether.
And why such nostalgia for such an ordinary town? Why do I remember the living room, the drab carpeting and maroon cherries on the heavy beige drapes? We'd walk to Tecumseh Park in the summer and dredge around in what passed for a pool, and be perfectly happy. Elm trees, cicadas buzzing their long lazy hot and dusty song, happiness.
Nostalgia refers to a sort of pain, an ache, like neuralgia. Not sure what the "nost" is, probably the past. I think I just want to get away from the present, start all over again, be a skinny 12-year-old and maybe do it all differently this time.
But I am almost certain I'd just make different mistakes.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
T.H.E. Cat Robert Loggia
I confess I never watched a single episode of T. H. E. Cat. I think I heard my brother refer to it once, so I knew about it. "Oh boy. T. H. E. Cat." His friend Grahame would say, "Choice or what." "Yeah." "T. H. E. Cat." It was so cool, it hurt. When I watch the opening titles, *I* hurt, it's so cool. There was never a time, and will never ever BE a time, like the '60s.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Kathleen Wilhelmina Gunning: a great lady,and sadly missed
Kathleen Wilhelmina
Gunning
GUNNING, Kathleen Wilhelmina (nee Hitching) -
Peacefully in her sleep on Thursday, December 1,
2011 , surrounded by family. Kathleen was in her 97th year. Beloved wife of
George Clifford Gunning, who predeceased her in April 2005. They were married
for 63 years. Mother of Bill (wife Margaret), Port Coquitlam , BC Oakville , ON Kingston , ON Caledonia , ON Crystal Hamilton , ON
Published in the Toronto December 3, 2011
To that point, her appreciation for life was a gift to everyone around her.
In forty years of knowing her, of having the privilege of being her daughter-in-law, I have too many memories to share here. Mostly I remember her kindness, her rather peppery humor, her straightforwardness. As an army nurse in World War II, she never lost the nurse's keen diagnostic eye, and if you didn't feel well she scanned that eye over you and told you what you should do. Like, go to bed, now!
I remember when my daughter was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, back in 1977, and she flew out from Ontario to help me. She'd never been alone on a plane before in her life, and I didn't ask, but she offered, and we could not refuse.
While I nursed a fractious, difficult baby, she did everything else, cooked, cleaned, kept my 18-month-old son amused. I just didn't have anything left for him, but Nana saved the day, and I will never forget it.
She made the best, and the most, of everything she had. She lived through the Great Depression, then dealt with many lean years while raising four kids by somehow stretching the resources, so that no one ever felt "poor".
Note Mum reflected in the background. I don't remember my Dad-in-law cutting up like this! Bill probably took the photo.
Going steady.
This is what Christmas looked like in 1947. Little Billy in Dad's lap is now 65!
My personal favorite. Surreal, misty, full of love. "Billy + Mummy, 5/6 months."
Lovely bride (1945).
Dedicated nurse.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Pardon me miss, but I've never done this
(From a musical called Little Me, unknown.)
FRED
Pardon me, miss, but I've never done this
With a real live girl.
Straight off the farm with an actual arm
Full of real live girl.
Pardon me if your affectionate squeeze
Fogs up my glasses and buckles my knees,
I'm simply drowned in the sight and the sound
And the scent and the feel
Of a real live girl.
SOLDIERS
Nothing can beat getting swept off your feet
By a real live girl.
Dreams in your bunk don't compare with a hunk
Of a real live girl.
Speaking of miracles, this must be it;
Just when I started to learn how to knit.
I'm all in stitches from finding what riches
A waltz can reveal
With a real live girl.
[Whistle]
Real live girl.
[Whistle]
Real live girl.
I've seen photographs and facsimiles
That have set my head off in a whirl,
But no work of art gets you right in the heart
Like a real live girl.
Take your statues of Juno,
And the Venus de My-lo.
(Me-lo.)
When a fellow wants you-know,
(We know.)
Who wants substitutes? I'll o-
Verlook everyone in the book
For a real
Sexy Sally or Suzabel.
Take your Venetian or Roman or Grecian
Ideal,
I'll take something more "uzabel."
Girls were like fellas was once my belief;
What a reversal, and what a relief.
I'll take the flowering hat and the towering heel
And the squeal
Of a real live girl.
[Dance]
Real live girl.
[Dance]
Real live girl.
Go be a holdout for Helen of Troy,
I am a healthy American boy.
I'd rather gape at the dear little shape
Of the stern and the keel
Of a full-time vocational,
Full-operational
Girl.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
It's December the first: let's have a party in my rec room
Seeing these guys again is like visiting old friends. I was an SCTV fanatic for many years, starting with their humble beginnings in Edmonton, Alberta (I swear the hot tub scene in that Joan Crawford sendup was filmed at the Edmonton Inn), then soaring to great heights on American national TV. Seldom has a comedy ensemble worked so well. Never noticed the saxophone growing out of Rick Moranis' head before.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
SCTV Christmas in Leutonia - Cabbage Rolls and Coffee
We watched this one over and over again. What the hell was it about? But it was funny. Kind of like the Five Neat Guys (see other clip). I thought this one was festive, especially hiding the egg and the Christmas Budgie. I won't get into exchanging the socks.
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
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