March 2006
Monthly Archive
Tue 14 Mar 2006
Posted by william under
Family[3] Comments
Sunday was Solomon’s Birthday party with his Dad (me) and his Dad’s family. Part of my feeling is sadness that Solomon has to deal with knowing he has two birthday parties and two groups of family that do not interact. The other part of me is gleeful that I can throw him an unapologetically Solomon centered bash that caters to none of his (other families) special needs.
So Solomon is all about Beowulf and playmobil castles and halberd wielding barbarians running after fiery dragons (perhaps soon princesses). Thus we have ye olde themed birthday party. All shall wear crowns, helms or horns or if fair, the tiara shall adorn the locks of the maidens of yore.
As our family is, there was a lot of talking. There was also a lot of cake, interaction and way, way to many presents.
Yes. Richard always looks like this. Check the Flickr Box.
Tue 14 Mar 2006
My Bree en Rose is a beautiful reminder each day on why love should be an important part of everyone’s life.
La Vie En Rose
Des yeux qui font baisser les miens,
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche,
Voil� le portrait sans retouche
De l’homme auquel j’appartiens
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et �a me fait quelque chose.
Il est entr� dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.
C’est lui pour moi. Moi pour lui
Dans la vie,
Il me l’a dit, l’a jur� pour la vie.
Et d�s que je l’aper�ois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
Des nuits d’amour � plus finir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Les ennuis les chagrins s’effacent
Heureux, heureux � en mourir.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et �a me fait quelque chose.
Il est entr� dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.
C’est toi pour moi. Moi pour toi
Dans la vie,
Il me l’a dit, l’a jur� pour la vie.
Et d�s que je l’aper�ois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
As sung by Edith Piaf
Sun 12 Mar 2006
This is a post about a cetacean. Like Slobodan Milosovic, Luna was a killer by reputation. Also like Slobodan Milosovic, Luna died today. It is unfortunate for the victims of the Serbian dictator’s regime, that Slobo was not killed by being rung over by a tugboat and sliced to bits. A little keel hauling a-la Louise Arbour could do the world some good parenthetically speaking.
So Luna was a mischievous rake who would bust up sailboats and cheekily encase the souls of dead Indian Chiefs from the nearby First Nations Communities but he was cute and a mammal and available as a plush toy, so we shall mourn.
Slobo, not so much.
Sun 12 Mar 2006
This month on the independent isle of Sark in the English Channel, what was once the world’s only surviving feudal system has been dragged into the 21st century by the European Convention on Human Rights. It seems that the island’s 600 or so residents were not all ready to throw off the velvet yoke of rural privilege for the dirty, pedestrian tedium that democracy will bring:
“Feudalism is a great system and has worked very well for the island. What people wanted was an option of no change at all,” resident Jennifer Cochrane said by telephone from her island home.
Since the 1560s when a group of colonists settled there from another small, obscure self-governing island in the Channel, the Island has been officially owned by the Queen but not part of the UK. It has been ruled, since then, by the holder of the Signeurie, essentially the Lord of the Manor.
There are no cars. The island is very small and from a recent radio show, those on it seen to have rural, upper class English accents.
This little island reminds me of the Peter Sellers movie “The Mouse who Roared” where the backwards inhabitants of a miniscule island kingdom stuck in the Middle Ages some how manage to steal the newest of the new Q-Bomb form the United States and thus become world powers.
I am sure the Bush Administration is sleeping easier at night knowing one more tyrannical regime has given way to the enlightenment of democracy. Sark Today, Iraq tomorrow… or the next day.
Sun 5 Mar 2006
Some of you may have seen the photo of Wagner (the wunderhund)after he had experimented oil paints. Now you see him again!
This time Bree was leading a child’s art activity and chose a favorite subject for the Opus Caninus.
Here he is In an original work by Briana Doyle in tempura. I think it remeniscent of a Tintin cartoon.
Sun 5 Mar 2006
Jocelyn has chided me saying “Why do you post poetry that is not your own? Rather you post poems by others. It is their words that ornament the paintings you post and not your own and yet you also have words.”
Well, the intent of her comment was the same if not the actual phraseology. I response to her (and what brother could refuse a younger sister, really?) I post here Not My Worst Poem by William Tomkinson. It is actually called Monument and it is inspired by reading a book of poetry by Montreal writer Louis Dudek.
Approach now and read for these are my words:
Monuments
Monuments are puzzles
That try to convince
That there was past civic energy
Industriousness, equity
In that they raised these Colossus’.
Find me one then
Uncorrupted by
Flattery, vain blood,
Fatal power, or oppressive
Fervent religion.
Or that are born of wealth
And for that are
Boasts of stone and steel
Patron and pomp to chiseling artists,
Now nothing in our minds.
So many plinths and pillars
A congealing scab
over the wounds of war
Garlands of grief
Like and Arch Triumphant
Still, struck still am I
By a limestone edifice
Standing in beauty
And making a mockery
Of the crumbled bones of its builder.
William Tomkinson 2000 (ish)
Fri 3 Mar 2006
A painting, a poem.
High Flight
Oh, I have slippped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there.
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer John G. McGee, Jr.
Thu 2 Mar 2006
Here is a painting that reminds me of some one I know. I will leave it to her to figure it out and comment. Ohh… The mystery and suspense.
My pointy elbowed father (who paints with paintbrushes regardless of how long his eyebrows grow) gets very excited about things. It is perhaps possible that he only gets excited about being excited about things but I will leave that. It is enough to say that when I was growing up (I still am so says I), he would often say to me (in a way that let me know that his demeanour alone should change my ways and put me on the narrow path)that I should be excited about things. I should find something that really impressed me and embrace it and let my excitement for it rule my temperament. This excitement (with some other mysterious potion called ‘practice’) would lead to my happiness.
Well to a greater or lesser degree I did what I could considering the barriers to entry. Still I see what the old man is able to do with his excitement and I am glad for him. This painting is not by him. It is by Kurbanov and it was poached from a website sent to me by the geezer himself.
So, who do you think it is?
Wed 1 Mar 2006
Well, Ok , so he is not famous in Estonia, but he is still my dad. So here is the painting and the poem.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Edmund Spenser
Wed 1 Mar 2006
Maroochidor is an Australian Beach town north of Brisbane. It is close to where I asked Briana to marry me. Here, my dad captures the East Australian Sunrise.
Here is a poem:
Parcel of Rogues
Fareweel to all our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name,
Sae fam’d in martial story.
Now Sark rins over Solway sands,
An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation !
What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro’ many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation !
O would, ere I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace !
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I’ll mak this declaration;
We’re bought and sold for English gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation !
Robert Burns
