Wake Up! I'm at St. Lawrence Market.

Good morning!  It's Saturday, December 8th and there are 17 days till Christmas!  It is not just morning - it is 5 AM in the morning.  Toronto's downtown core is quiet, with neither streetcar or people around.  Just an empty taxi going up and down Queen Street like a shark looking for food.  Old City Hall just rang the hour and the sound reverberates through the empty streets as a stray pedestrian scurries across, heading to the Sheraton or up Young Street.  No one watches the elves or Santa in the Hudson Bay windows nor does the emergency room look busy at St. Mike's hospital. 

The Metropolitan Church sits in quiet solitude with a few hearty souls camped in sleeping bags around it.  St. James' spire reaches to the sky through the darkness straining to see the first hint of dawn.  St. Lawrence Market is awake and welcoming.  Walk into the North Farmer's Market and there will be more than a few people to greet you.  Mind you, they'll be half asleep after driving from surrounding Ontario farms into the city.  Yet their produce will be neatly stacked on the tables in the large hall, coffee will be held in one hand while change is made for your purchase in another. 

Take home some winter root vegetables; like squash, carrots, parsnips and beets.  Visit the potato man and buy some unique spud with a fancy name for $4 bucks a generous pint.  He sells flowers too, somehow managing to find affordable roses in the depth of winter.  While you are there, pick up some organic sweet potatoes and Ontario maple syrup for a sweet and savory side dish.  Visit any of the meat and sausage vendors for the main course and finish off with fresh herbs like rosemary as a garnish.  Don't forget your sweet tooth.  Buy a pie or bring back a strudel for your second cup of Joe at home.  Speaking of coffee, drop over to chat with the knowledgeable people brewing freshly ground coffee near the south door.  They'll tell you about their latest varietals while grinding you a pound or two to take home for Sunday morning brunch.  Don't forget the freshest eggs, just laid on Friday!  Before you know it, you've made a few friends and brought home the week's bounty. 

If you're still up for another adventure, head to the South Market and search for that perfect Lobster, creamiest cheese or stellar homemade pasta.  Have a peameal sandwich, big enough for two.  Give a twoony to one of the guys selling Street News.  Pick up a Saturday paper from downstairs while you snatch some perfectly made mole and salsa from the vendor across the way.  Find  honey that will keep a cold away from the vendor that sells over 50 varieties while snatching still warm baked goods before heading home.  Your arms are full, the bags overflow and there is no need to visit Loblows now.  Not until you need toilet paper or dish detergent. 

St. Lawrence Market is a unique food destination distinct to Toronto.  It ebbs and flows with the energy of Ontario farmers and small food marketeers whose lives are focused on feeding you and  me.  Some say it is expensive - and I'll counter by telling you to go after 1P and before 5 PM any Saturday.  The market is winding down and prices drop as the farmers and fishmonger have fresh product that has to go.  The downstairs bakery bundles the last of the fresh bread and pastry as well and sells to move them out the door.  Suddenly your loony stretches a little farther. 

Go again next Saturday and the next.  The St. Lawrence vendors will start to recognize you and begin to tell you about their week, save the ripest brie for you or offer the Sunday New York Times newspaper to a homesick New Yorker (me!).  The many farmers and different vendors are warm and welcoming to repeat Market offenders and you learn so much about how Toronto eats.  Make sure to keep an eye out for me and say hello.  I'll be talking with the potato man about his week or choosing the freshest eggs while sharing a joke or two with gentleman behind that counter.  It is just past 6 AM and I've got a few more farmers to speak with and there is the South Market yet to visit.  Why aren't you here?  It's the best party in Toronto's downtown core on a Saturday morning. 

It's Friday with ABT Soloist Misty Copeland

www.abt.org

About 4 or 5 years back, I was regularly seeing ballet performed by the American Ballet Theatre at Lincoln Center in the Metropolitan Opera House.  There was a lovely dancer with curves unlike any other dancer on point.  Who was this unusual ballerina?  Misty Copeland was then a member of the Corps de Ballet and fighting all stereotypes by being an African American dancer in a very tradition bound company. 

She has since become a soloist with ABT and is attracting her very own following of admirers.  I am unabashedly one of them.  With grace under critical and cultural fire, she exudes all the necessary ballet skill while demonstrating love for her art.  May she continue to rise in the ABT's ranks and become a principal dancer in the next year or two.  More importantly, may she continue to reshape the conversation around body type, ethnicity and stereotypes found in the ballet and arts in general. 

BRAVO, MISTY! 

One more thing - she has created a 2013 calendar that is both inspirational and incredibly awe jaw dropping.  Check out the Sneak a Peak link to her website.  It could be an incredible gift for some lucky young dreamer. 

Writing a Journal, Reading a Memoir

The one absolute in my life has been reading.  The act of settling down in a comfortable chair, perhaps a cup of tea or something stronger and a book is my idea of nirvana. 

When I entered my early teens, I began reading romantic novels.  The Nun's Story penned by Kathryn Hulme in 1956 and later made into a film starring Audrey Hepburn influenced my view of Catholic piety and sacrifice well into my twenties.  The Wolf and the Dove written by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss in 1974 introduced me to passionate love in historical settings.  Desiree, a romance set in Napoleon's France and written by Annemarie Selinko in 1951 introduced the genre of story based upon true events and people.  Marlon Brando as Napoleon and Jean Simmons as Desiree Clary starred in the film version of 1954.  This last book influenced my internal expression of self for a lifetime. 

Significantly, Desiree as a young girl of 14 begins to write in a journal given to her by her late father, a silk merchant of Marseilles, France.  She continues to write as she marries, bears a child, supports her husband, Marshall Bernadotte through the many wars of the era all the while watching the rise and fall of her first love, Napoleon Bonaparte.  She ends her journal upon the morning of her coronation day as Queen of Sweden.  Though I have moved many times, Desiree has remained on the bookshelf as an old and trusted friend. 

Journal writing may have started as a copied affectation of a favorite book character, though soon enough it became my private pleasure, a secret mental space for ranting, raving and all things in between.  Through the years I have turned to them to reread the passages from this era or another of my life and have been glad to renew acquaintances with the girl, new mother, or lover I once was.  I hope to leave them for a deserving grandchild, for my children have no interest in them.  The versions of truth told may be too close for their comfort.  Another option may be to turn them into a memoir or work of autobiographical fiction. 

Which leads to two books recently read that are so beautifully, heart achingly done well.  Ru is an autobiographical fictional work by Kim Thuy, a young woman living in Montreal who herself immigrated from Saigon, Vietnam.  A single paragraph may grace a page to describe an incident or thought, while others are several pages long.  There is a chaotic sense of back and forth via memories and connections that is surprisingly engaging.  There is a poetry to the phrases that as you read they begin to sing a plaintive song of lost worlds and found new ones. 

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness tells the tale of "Nicole Fuller of Central Africa", the author Alexandra Fuller's mother.  Nicole was raised in post-war Kenya and later lived in Rhodesia through the East African conflicts of the late '60's and finally settling on a banana and fish farm in the Zambezi Valley.  Through generous doses of alcohol and moments of mental illness, Nicole and her family personally experience the bloody passing of imperial British rule into the uncertainty of African independence.  Alexandra's strength in this memoir is reflected in her straight forward presentation of this family - warts and all.  A price is paid for the choices made, beliefs held and relationships forged. 

A life lived in active engagement with the times in which one lives is worthy of memoir.  Whether you are 15 or 50 pick up your pen, sit at your keyboard or engage with your ipad and write about your life and times.  At the very least, read a book that inspires you to learn more about this crazy world we live in.  "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (Santayana)

Armchair Travel to Tibet

Two books have lead me in an armchair journey to the very top of Mount Everest and around the holy Mount Kailas;  Into The Silence - The Great War, Mallory, And The Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis and To A Mountain In Tibet penned by Colin Thubron. 

Davis writes in sweeping historical context of the British imperial ambitions in Tibet, the Great War sufferings of Mallory and his generation and the post war attempts through the early Everest climbs to reestablish British imperial honor and glory.  The book is filled with detail and at times it overwhelms the strength of Mallory's saga to conquer Everest.  In the end, I gained an understanding of modern Great War and Tibetan history while coming to understand why people climb Everest in the first place.

Thubron pilgrimage begins in the aftermath of his mother's death in Simikot, Nepal below the western Himalaya and will lead him over the border through southwestern Tibet to the base of Mount Kailas.  Sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bon (an older Tibetan shamanistic faith) while sited within the sources of four major Asian rivers, Mount Kailas brings personal transformation to the author while sharing with the reader historical, geographical and cultural tales of the area.  There is a clear eyed view of both land and peoples that kept my imagination and intellect busy.  It also explained some of the modern political realities of Chinese rule in Tibet. 

Tibet of the 1930's is lost to us; swept away by the throes of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1970's and into modern Chinese sovereignty.  The following BBC video supplements the two books nicely and brings to life Tibetan peoples and their culture in a way print only suggests. 

 

Neither book convinces me to plan a trip anytime soon to Everest or Kailas.  My place is here in Toronto walking a different path.  There is though an admiration of those who would continue to uphold cultural and faith traditions in the face of Maoist insurgency and Chinese rulership.   There is also an understanding that the importance of a journey or quest is in the immersion into the physical world of action while centering heart and mind to learn of less material things.   There is no guarantee of success when on such a journey.  Mallory lost his life while Thubron's transformation is as the mist wrapping Kailas from view.  Both books will leave you with a bit of awe for the mountains, the people who would live and travel among them and the personal beliefs and faith systems that lighten their loads. 

 

Let me end with a favorite quote attributed to Buddha: 

 

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make our world.  





Three Women to Sing Friday Into Action

Start off with a new artist I just heard yesterday on the Canadian CBC2 radio program late in the afternoon.  She's Caro Emerald, a European artist that sounds like someone I'd like to party with.  It's a seductive way to slip into the weekend. 

Now listen to the Canadian artist Jully Black sing Seven Day Fool.  The raw vitality of the performance is haunting.  I haven't seen an artist with such physical power since Tina Turner. 

 

Last but not least, Asa - Be My Man is soft and seductive.  Turn it on, pour the wine and let's get the weekend started!





 

 

Country Comfort - The Musical Kind



www.freecodesource.com

 

When the TVs were black and white and made by Zenith, my father listened every evening in the late 1960's to the Porter Wagoner Show aired on a local UHF channel.  Rings of ciggarette smoke encircled his head, while he sipped his Ballantine Beer and Seagram's whiskey while perched in a big old recliner in the TV room or in the adjacent and less comfortable kitchen.  He'd just about tolerate my pre-teen presence if I sat still and didn't talk much.  Sometimes Mom would join us, in between extended journey's to the hospital for soft tissue infections related to her "sugar" problem.  My younger brother would be there too, somewhere in the background.  Mostly though, it was just me and my dad in front of the boob tube on an early weekend evening, listening to country music. 

He thought Johnny Cash walked on water while Dolly Parton sung with a permanent halo shinning around her.  This was a hard working man's music which he could understand.  Heartache, suffering and the simple joys found when you didn't have a dime resonated in the country music lyrics of the day.  Dolly was introduced to the public on Porter's show in 1966, and in early clips her dyed blond hair is piled high and she sings with a twang I've never heard so sweetly sung before or since.  Porter stood beside her with an equally tall and unnatural blond pompadour and a sparkly Nudie suit with a lower tenor to compliment the sound.  Below is a quick clip from 1968. 

Twenty or more years would go by before I got to Nashville.  Somehow I managed to get front row side tickets for a Grand Ole Opry show with Porter Wagoner in attendance.  He didn't disappoint in performance or costume; showing off an interior flap of his jacket which was all lit up in flashy design to rival the front panels.  My children were oh...6 and 8 and sat patiently through the show.  To this day, my attachment to country music just grows and grows as life unravels and heartaches, sorrows and joys all pile up through the years.  Here's one of my favorite Cash videos which haunts me in it's beauty and sorrow, "Hurt". 

There are just too many artists to name who fall under the genre of Country whose music has somehow moved me.  Gillian Welch's pure sound brings back early memories of the original Carter Family, A.P, Sara and Maybelle.  I hear June Carter Cash in the growl of her daughter Carlene Carter, while Rosanne Cash reflects the musical heritage of her father Johnny with every note she sings.  I love the bad boys of country, outlaws like "the possum" George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Dwight Yoakam, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and more recently Toby Keith.  Sly Lyle Lovett excites me just as much as thoughtful Mary Chapin Carpenter does.  K.D. Lang's "Big Boned Gal" gets me up and dancing every time while Lee Ann Womack's "Twenty Years and Two Husbands Ago" is like auld lang syne sung with a southern twist.  I'm anxious to hear more of the modern country troubadours like Eric Church, Little Big Town and Band Perry. 

Just recently, I heard "Red Solo Cup" by Toby Keith which illicits a guilty giggle or two.  This one song makes brings to mind my grown up son who I believe has a great many red solo cups in his personal drinking history.  It also leads me back to those beer and whiskey infused nights with my father, drowning his sorrow and regret in the sound of a country guitar and the bow of a fiddle.  Rest in peace Dad, you're up there with Johnny to sing you a tune. 



Getting it Done in NYC

guardian.co.uk

The people who live in the city of New York are the reason why the city thrives.  Everyone that lives there has a dream, a hope and a prayer for themselves and their loved ones, and they try to make it happen everyday, 24-7.  No less hopeful are those who live in the larger Metro Area.  They decide to live in the 'burbs because they believe in the values and lifestyle of the places where they live. 

Hurricane Sandy rolled in hitting the city and surrounding metro area hard.  The stories coming out of Staten Island, Queens, Long Island, Lower Manhattan and all areas of Jersey tell of death, destruction, flooding, loss of power, and looting.  Subways and trains are only partially up and getting gas to fill your car's tank or keep the generator running is still problematic.  There are alternative story lines as well, including volunteers coming out to help neighbors, FEMA and the Red Cross getting into action and the Marathon finally being cancelled. 

New York City will recover, the Jersey Shore will rise again and yes, the Marathon will be held in 2013.  The families in Breezy Point, Queens will rebuild their close knit neighborhood, while those out in Tottenville will also find the strength needed to clean out basements or replace looted items.  Portions of the Lower East Side are finally beginning to get power back.  The New York Stock Exchange is open, lower Manhattan corner convenience stores have power back up and more and more flash lights are going back into closet drawers everyday post storm. 

An economic boom will resound after Hurricane Sandy's bust, if only because New Yorkers and Metro Area citizens will be looking to replace, rebuild, and clean up from the storm.  Many peoples' quality of life has taken a hit though, and now is the time to begin to think about the long term effects of climate change and rising water levels.  Lower Manhattan and the the surrounding shorelines are all at continued risk of future storms and continued global warming. 

At crucial moments in it's history, New York City took the necessary steps to build municipal water works, mass transit and safe urban infrastructure.  Each policy proved painfully expensive at the time, but a balance of political will and public support got it done.  Getting it done assured the city's future greatness of which we share in today.  Now is the time to step up to the plate and become national leaders in addressing climate change.  By doing so, the city will influence the surrounding Metro Areas in their policy choices and lifestyle commitments.

Hard fiscal decisions lie ahead.  Do you rebuild where water will rise to reclaim your efforts once again?  Does the city invest in flood gates or some kind of dyke system?  Should the financial district move further north, away from lower Manhattan?  How do you protect the power infrastructure in the future?  How do you equitably meet the needs of the poorest while supporting those experiencing unexpected hardships in usually comfortable lives? 

All of these questions and more require the voting public's attention, political partisanship and fiscal willpower.  New Yorkers, Jersey folk - get out and vote next Tuesday.  Begin to talk with your neighbors about climate change, disaster relief and shoreline issues.  Elect politicians that will push for effective public policy that will address these issues. 

The people of New York City and the surrounding Metro Area are stubborn, driven, successful souls who overcome everyday challenges to build for their family's future success.  They get it done 24-7, 365 days a year and I believe they'll get it done after Hurricane Sandy as well.