Portuguese Dinner

It was my daughters 17th birthday; my school’s second evening of auction previews, and, the graduation for our full time students in a downtown gallery. A bit over the top evening was planned. We decided to go to the graduation and opening of the student show with my daughter, and than we would go out to dinner and she could choose where we would go. Since we were already downtown for the opening, she chose the Wild Orchid, one of Hamilton’s favorite Portuguese restaurants.

We started with drinks, a white wine for my wife, water for my daughter and beer for me.

We started the food portion of the evening with Pao De Aveiro, an appetizer which is an oven baked bread stuffed with Portuguese sausage and brushed with garlic. It is sort of half moon shaped bread.

We followed that with Calamari, breaded and deep fried and served with a tomato sauce.

My main dish was Arroz De Marisco This is Portuguese rice with Clams, Mussels, shrimp, Lobster, Crab, Calamari, Jumbo Tiger Shrimp and Scallops married together in a light pimento and tomato based sauce. Made in a Cataplana.

Cataplana is a Portuguese seafood dish, popular on the country's Algarve coast. It is also the name of the special cookware used to prepare the dish, which is traditionally made of copper and shaped like two clamshells hinged at one end and able to be sealed using a clamp on either side of the assembly.

Much like the word Tagine, Cataplana is the name for both the recipe and utensil in which you cook it. Cataplanas are a feature of many Algarve kitchen and are often used as a centrepiece dish at social gatherings.

This was the first time in living memory that I have ever brought home food from a restaurant! While my family usually has a “doggy bag”, I never have as I eat my meal! Well, this one was too much!

It was so fantastic and so hot (not spicy, but physically hot!) as the Cataplana keeps things very warm. It’s pungent and mouth watering and contains at least a whole crab and lobster (I think) and massive amounts of all the other seafood. They had it for one or two on the menu, and I had the one, but it easily could be for two.

My highest recommendations go out for this dinner. My wife had a beautiful fish dish served with rice and salad and my daughter had a most amazing Stuffed Calamari, the likes of which I’ve never seen. It had two huge stuffed calamari, and one came home for later on this weekend.

If you’re in the Hamilton area, go to the Wild Orchid on James Street North, always a winner!

What a wind!

Talk about a wind! What a day we had here. The wind was coming at 100 kph (kilometers per hour, about 62 miles an hour)

I was walking Max this morning and saying to him, “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore”. This line is ranked #4 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

Stuff was flying past me and the debris began to pick up and I was pelted with detritus. Today was garbage pick up day in my neighborhood. Before I left to walk Max I put out three “green bins” with paper, plastic and assorted items, and when I returned they all were gone! The bins I was able to find within a block of my house, the assorted garage was long gone ion all my neighbors lawns.

Max was scratching at something on the ground, and I stopped to see what he had found that was so interesting. I looked harder and could not believe my eyes, he was sniffing a pair of women’s bikini thongs, stained and quite used, that had either come out of the trash somewhere along the way, or had been tossed out of a passing motor vehicle in a mad dash for excitement.

The day ended when I came home and found two eight foot sections of my wooden fence lying on the ground!

Performance

John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauchenberg

I remember a life changing, monumental performance that I attended that seemed to never be mentioned again, anywhere. It may have had less impact on others than it had on me, and may have simply been presented all over the place, but it was an amazing Sunday afternoon I spent those many years ago.

As I thought about it, and was unable to find a Google or Wikipedia mention about it, I called the Baltimore Museum of Art and asked about it, several years ago. It took a while for them to get back to me, and I think they thought I was some maniac who had invented the impossible and was trying to prove it to someone else. They searched their records and were able to document a Sunday afternoon in 1964, and it said that the Friends of the Museum had presented a recital or a performance; I can’t remember how it was phrased, by Mr. Cunningham and his crew, or something like that. No indication of the event beyond that was ever documented.

The event was a dance performance by Merce Cunningham, on the stage as decorated by Robert Rauschenberg with music performed by David Tutor. I can assume most cultured people know who Cunningham and Rauschenberg were, but Tudor would be less known, although I knew who he was 47 years ago!
Nam June Pike, John Cage, David Tudor
David Tudor, Wikipedia describes as: Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the first American performance of the Piano Sonata No. 2 by Pierre Boulez in 1950, and a European tour in 1954 greatly enhanced his reputation. Karlheinz Stockhausen dedicated his Klavierstück VI (1955) to Tudor. Tudor also gave early performances of works by Morton Feldman and La Monte Young.

The composer with which Tudor is particularly associated is John Cage. He gave the premiere of Cage's Music of Changes, Concerto For Piano and Orchestra and the notorious 4' 33". Cage said that many of his pieces were written either specifically for Tudor to perform or with him in mind, once stating "what you had to do was to make a situation that would interest him. That was the role he played.”[1] The two worked closely together on many of Cage's pieces, both works for piano and electronic pieces, including for the Smithsonian Folkways album: Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music (1992).

After a stint teaching at Darmstadt from 1956 to 1961, Tudor began to wind up his activities as a pianist to concentrate on composing. He wrote mostly electronic works, many commissioned by Cage's partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham. His homemade musical circuits are considered landmarks in live electronic music and electrical instrument building as a form of composition. One piece, Reunion (1968), written jointly with Lowell Cross features a chess game, where each move triggers a lighting effect or projection. At the premiere, the game was played between John Cage and Marcel Duchamp.

Upon Cage's death in 1992, Tudor took over as music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Among many works created for the company, Tudor composed Soundings: Ocean Diary (1994), the electronic component of Ocean, which was conceived by John Cage and Merce Cunningham, with choreography by Merce Cunningham, orchestral music by Andrew Culver, and design by Marsha Skinner.

Tudor died in Tomkins Cove, New York at the age of 70.

His performance in those days, way before all our current electronics, was stunning! He played a piano which was electrified all over, so he banged out rhythms on the wood and strummed strings and most memorable were the amplified squeaky doors to the entrance to the museum hall that were played.

The whole thing was visually and aurally stunning!

In Service Workshop

A long time ago when I was a Junior High Teacher, we were all called in for an in-service workshop. These are, as you probably know, scheduled into the school year as days off for the kids and a classroom experience, sort of, for the teachers. It’s a time to bring us all "up to speed” on current issues etc.

The Administration of the Howard County Maryland School System, back in a time when it was very small, had planned a full day of activities, and it had started with a morning lecture which was to be the keynote and a way to kick it all off. Unfortunately the keynote speaker, I have no idea who it was to be or what he was going to talk about, but that speaker could not make it that morning, so long ago somewhere in the mid- 1960’s.

I have no idea what I would have done, given the last minute discovery of this information, but they did what they could. I guess they couldn’t just let us go, and in an effort top make it look like they had made an effort, they came up with another speaker. This was a man described as a scientist, who would speak to us, in an illustrated lecture, on the “Geology of the Moon”.

We were told in no uncertain terms that we were all professionals, and because of this we should be interested in the education of the whole child, and scientific information would be good for all of us anyway. The heavy emphasis was on “professional”, not just plain teachers.

The speaker had slides of somewhere out west where he assumed the world looked pretty much like the moon. This was, of course, before we ever landed on the moon, and it could have been green cheese and therefore more interesting, but southwest slides of rock formations were ours to see and hear about for the next 1 ½ to 2 hours!.

We were devastated. It was so boring, I guess it would be of some interest to science teachers, that I can still remember the talk and the slides, speaks to it just a bit.

When it ended, thank God, we all breathed a sigh of relief and were presented with the Superintendent who told all of us “professionals” that we were free for an hour for lunch, and warned us of the dire consequences of returning late. Our professional status ended with his remarks.

The rest of the day is lost in history.

Hank Had The Solution

This one was a long time ago, and I may screw up the details a bit, and Hank may tell me what they were but…….
We, the Alliance of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) were putting up an exhibit at the National Art Educators Convention, in Miami (I hope). The attendees included Hank Putch, who was at the time the Director of AICAD and anyone else from the colleges who had an Art Education Department, and a few like myself who came from Art Education Departments or who wanted to go to Miami. We also had some recruitment people with us as art teachers were of course an important link to potential art students.

The exhibition was of drawings representing all of the schools involved with AICAD at the time, or at least the ones who sent drawings to Hank. We had a designated space in the Exhibition Hall, along with other vendors such as books and art supplies dealers. Ours was not a direct sales area, but a subtle marketing booth and an opportunity to see the best of what we did. AS I remember now, it was all work from Foundation year, the first year students. This was done to show high school teachers mainly the relationship between what they sent us and what they achieved in a year, rather than putting up “professional” portfolios which would have little reference points for the classroom teacher.

We had to mount this exhibit, and knew we would have no way to get the schools to send framed work, ready for hanging and we had to have a way to display them.

In those days, the 80’s I believe, shrink wrapping was not a common thing and none of us had such a device. As well, if we went to a frame shop and had them shrink wrap all of the drawings, some were very large, it would have been an enormous expense, not budgeted for I’m sure.

Hank had an incredible solution. He went (as I remember) to his local Safeway in Washington and convinced the butcher (who had an unlimited supply of shrink wrap paper and a machine) to, as a favor to art and humanity, shrink wrap tons of drawings so we could safely take them to Miami and display them.

My hats off to Hank, for an incredible “save” so many years ago and to let him know his good deeds are not forgotten!

The Artist's Dinner

I gave my wife a cookbook for a present several years ago (we collect them) and this one was “The Artist’s Palate”, “Cooking with the World’s Great Artists” by Frank Fedele. I had forgotten about it.

Yesterday, my wife came home late and didn’t want to make an elaborate meal. She wanted something vegetarian and looked into this book. She discovered Will Barnet’s Linguini with Garlic and Oil. Will was an old friend, and it was a coincidence that we did his dish.

For my regular readers, you may remember that of the four pieces of art my daughter took to Montreal with her, one was Will Barnet’s “Blue Bicycle”. Also, Rosie owns an early Will Barnet wood cut he gave to her upon her birth, 19 years ago.

This simple dish consists of:

1 lb. linguini (we used whole wheat)

6-7 cloves garlic

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

1 bunch of parsley roughly cut

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese (we used Parmesan Regiano)

Salt and pepper to taste


Cook pasta in boiling salted water

Heat oil to hot, add the garlic,. Cook for 2-3 minutes.

Add ¾ of the parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Remove from heat and pour over the drained linguini

Add grated cheese and garnish with the remaining parsley.


Simple, flavorful, wonderful and served with a warm loaf of bread and a big bottle of some good red wine, it was a miracle out of very little.

CLUMSY

Years ago, when I lived in Massachusetts, we were working in the kitchen cleaning up or starting dinner or something and I was at the sink. My wife came by me and opened the dishwasher on my right, and was putting some things into it, left the door open to return with more and I never noticed her doing this. I finished whatever I was doing and moved, without checking the area a foot off of the ground, to my right. I contacted the open dishwasher door and went flying to my right, and landed on the floor, thankfully missing the door completely as it would have done in the dishwasher.


Clumsy people are simply clumsy. Large people have some locomotion problems moving about in a world designed by smaller people. The one size fits all concept is never true. It works in “most” of the cases.

While I have never been known for my clumsiness, it is somewhat evident in my life. Now that I have aged, it gets thrown in my face as if it just came about and is caused by some aging process, probably a brain dysfunction. As nasty as the accusation is, I need not defend myself although that’s usually the position I’m in. I feel threatened, and have to remind myself that I fell out of an amusement park ride at the age of 12 and I tripped in the garage and broke my ankle eleven years ago. All that happens now is more of a life long pattern rather than new events.

In a world where we all look at our elderly with a questioning glance (are they OK? Do they hear? Do they understand?) it is hard to have a perceived weakness. The kindness of strangers is not always appreciated, especially if we see it as their perception of our weakness. I will readily admit to a bit of paranoia, but I’m doing fine.

I’m just, as always, a bit clumsy!

מצה ברייט‎ Matzah Brei

Matzah brei is “fried matzah. Wikipedia says about it:

Matzah brei (Yiddish: מצה ברײַ; Hebrew: מצה ברייט‎, matzah breit, or מצה מטוגנת, matzah metugenet, literally, "fried matzah"), sometimes spelled matzah brie or matzo brei, is a dish of Ashkenazi Jewish origin made from matzo fried with eggs.

Numerous recipes exist for this dish. Typically the dry matzo is briefly softened in hot water or milk, broken into pieces, mixed with eggs, and pan-fried in butter, oil or schmaltz. It may be formed into a cake, like a frittata, or broken up and cooked like scrambled eggs. It can be savory or sweet. It may be combined; omelet-style, with meat and other foods, or it may be topped with sauces such as apple sauce, salsa or preserves. Some eat it with sugar, syrup, or jelly.

Matzah brei is commonly eaten as a breakfast food during Passover, when only unleavened bread is permitted. However, some Jews do not eat matzah brei during Passover because they do not eat gebrochts, matzah that has come into contact with water.

Erev Pesach ('Eve of Passover'), the traditional night of the First Seder, is on Monday, April 18, 2011. While I seldom recognize the holidays too much in my family, I do have the “food roots” and need my fix of holiday food. This time of year, while my wife wants to start dyeing eggs, I crave Matzah brei.

I was going to make a run to the store this morning, as a Sunday morning would be a perfect time to have a big breakfast, when a quick look through the pantry found an unopened box of matzah. Most of you won’t have this around, but this time of year you are likely to find it in any supermarket within a stones throw of some sort of Jewish enclave. No enclave, you may have to send for it.

I proceeded to make my matzah brei. Here’s this mornings recipe:

4 sheets of matzah

5 eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

Oil or margarine (I use olive oil)

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, break 3 sheets of matzah into small pieces.

2. Pour in hot water to soften matzah.

3. Strain mixture to remove water and leave softened matzah

4. Break up additional sheet of dry matzah and put on top of wet matzah

5. In a separate bowl, beat eggs.

6. Add eggs, salt and pepper to matzah. Mix well.

7. Heat oil in a frying pan. Cook matzah-egg mixture over medium heat

8. When lightly browned (yellowed even) on one side, turn out onto large plate or pizza pan and turn over,     back into the hot frying pan, to get the second side done.

9. Some people prefer a scrambled type mixture, in my household we always made a large omelet type presentation.

10. Feel free to eat it with jelly, jam, syrup and anything else that works for you.


My wife and I had it for breakfast, my daughter declined. “Not her favorite ethnic food”, she declared.

I can’t stop smiling, and we even have some leftovers for later!

The Teddy

Editors Note: This is not anyone I know, it is a Teddy.

I never was one to kiss and tell too much. It always seemed inappropriate, and it required the need to brag about sexual conquests. Maybe I didn’t have too many of those so there was little to tell. Plus, certainly as a kid, the stories guys told were often made up.


My old friend calls every now and then and tells me stories from the “old days” and about “affairs” he has had with women I know. I wrote about one some time ago called (I think) Sex in the Pool. This was a confession from him about breaking into my back yard and “using” pool with a woman we both knew. He has permanently scarred me for life with the changing image of so many of my old friends.

So this story is not quite a “kiss and tell” but borders on one, but in thinking about it recently, it made me laugh.

I had a date with this woman, a lovely woman who I genuinely liked, and we ended up at my apartment (to no great surprise). Neither of us were married at the time so it breaks no moral codes I have. We worked our way upstairs to my bedroom, and were fumbling around (my term) when I found, much tio my surprise, she was wearing a Teddy! I had never seen such a thing before in my life!

A Teddy as described by Wikipedia:

A teddy, also called a bodysuit or camiknicker, is a form of bodysuit-like lingerie, in the past often worn in the boudoir. It is an undergarment which combines a camisole and panty in one piece. Unlike a full bodysuit, it is typically looser and more sheer, and may be designed to slip off from the shoulders, rather than to open at the crotch.

Originally, they were marketed under the name envelope chemise or camiknickers; the latter was coined in the 1920s when they were introduced as a one-piece garment and it was derived from camisole and knickers. It was an appropriate garment to wear under the shorter dresses of the time and also gained popularity during the World War II when women who served in military-related duties wore trousers instead of skirts. By the late 1940s the garment became less popular. The garment re-appeared in the lingerie market in the 1990s under the name teddy or bodysuit.

Cool guys, when I was a kid, would brag about how they could remove a girl’s bra with a snap of the fingers, just a snap and the little hooks would open. Now I’ve lived a long time but as far as I’ve ever seen, even with complete cooperation, this was not possible.

No matter how hard I worked at it, there was a degree of skill developed over time, but no instant snap worked.

The Teddy was another thing indeed! I had no idea where to start. Even in long ago hind sight, I was dumbfounded. As I remember, I had to ask her to remove it as I didn’t know where to start. I was over 40 year’s old and this was too much for me!

I have no more stories to tell as the rest is lost in memory. Let’s just say the rest of the night was magic! It probably wasn’t, and the woman would remember this a different way, but let me put myself in the best perspective! I guess that may border on bragging.

I Am Curious Yuk!

The art house and art film are defined by Wikipedia as:


An art film (also known as art movie, specialty film, art house film, or in the collective sense as art cinema) is typically a serious, independently made film aimed at a niche audience rather than a mass audience. Film critics and film studies scholars typically define an "art film" using a "...canon of films and those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films",which includes, among other elements: a social realism style; an emphasis on the authorial expressivity of the director; and a focus on the thoughts and dreams of characters, rather than presenting a clear, goal-driven story. Film scholar David Bordwell claims that "art cinema itself is a [film] genre, with its own distinct conventions.

Art film producers usually present their films at specialty theatres (repertory cinemas, or in the U.S. "art house cinemas") and film festivals. The term art film is much more widely used in the United States than in Europe, where the term is more associated with "auteur" films and "national cinema" (e.g., German national cinema). Art films are aimed at small niche market audiences, which means they can rarely get the financial backing which will permit large production budgets, expensive special effects, costly celebrity actors, or huge advertising campaigns, as are used in widely-released mainstream blockbuster films. Art film directors make up for these constraints by creating a different type of film, which typically uses lesser-known film actors (or even amateur actors) and modest sets to make films which focus much more on developing ideas or exploring new narrative techniques or filmmaking conventions.

Late in the 50’s, art houses were appearing in my native Baltimore, and at one time there were four or five of them in existence. They were small, usually urban, and had coffee available in the lobby rather than a candy counter. There would often be intermissions between reels or films to get your coffee. I can’t remember if the coffee was free or one paid for it, but it was quite a nice place to go. They had art shows in the lobby, rededicated as galleries. I remember kind of dressing up to go to see the newest of films and saw many Ingmar Bergman classics in the art theater.

The memorable evening I recall, my friend Mark and I had gone to see something (funny, the film escapes me not the evening) on a weeknight I believe, and we were in a somewhat questionable urban neighborhood. After the movie ended, I remember walking back to his car, and when we arrived and went to get in, as he opened his door he made a sound, not describable, and had the most horrific look I had ever seen on a human being. He screamed! And was looking at his hand!

He asked me for matches so he could see (obviously unhurt but shook up) and what he saw startled us both.

Someone had wrapped a pork chop around his door handle! While this is hysterical now, at the time the feeling of raw meat when you were reaching for the metal door handle was not explainable.

I will admit we laughed about it on the way home, but it was an incredible shock.

Little Thanksgiving Stories

In keeping with the Thanksgiving theme I just started, I thought bout two stories of festive dinners that happened to my first wife and myself.


The first was her first turkey. We were married just a short while when it came time to cook the first turkey. Unlike my son twenty years later, our turkey was thawed and cooked by my wife to a beautiful golden brown.

We brought it out of the oven, and she prepared to carve the bird. Neither one of us had ever really made a turkey before and as we carved it, something seemed wrong. What was this stuff inside of the turkey? It seemed like a paper bag. It was a paper bag!

I guess no one had ever said to remove the bag with the giblets before cooking.

Later on at Thanksgiving dinner in 1962, during her first pregnancy, the excuse everyone used for the mishap, my wife was charged with carrying the sweet potato casserole her mother had made into the dining room. As luck would have it, the casserole slipped out of her hands and landed, sticky side down, on to the dining room carpeting!

For my favorite story of the day, on December 1, 2010 I posted to this blog:

We drove nine hours on Thursday to get to New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with my mother-in-law. It was a long trip, and we were tired, but happy to arrive and get a traditional, home cooked, Thanksgiving dinner.

Before we ate, I said, "Let's all say what we're thankful for".

My mother-in-law said, "I know that I'm most thankful for (here she names my sister and brother in law and their two kids).

The chopped liver family (us) sat in stunned silence waiting for the rest of the sentence.

There was none.

Calling Home

My oldest daughter called last night several times to discuss her health. She was not well due to a sore throat, pink eye and an assortment of maladies, and needed Mom to help her through this. As well, even I got into the act a bit, but I’m usually only brought in on matters needing money so I added what to do if you need money. She is in Montreal, and seldom communicates with me (except money issues) but does need her Mom from time to time.


This all reminded me of the last time one of my sons needed help. Sons, it seems, at least in my house, went to Dad.

It was Thanksgiving Day, in 1988 or 89, and my middle son called in at 10:00 a.m. in the morning. He was living in an apartment in Chicago at the time. “Dad, how do you make a turkey?”

It was a bit late to be asking such a question, but Dad was the cook and the one to ask, and even their Mother would have been fine with this one as I had almost always cooked the turkey.

“Do you have people coming for dinner?” I asked and of course there was a dinner party planned.

I gave him a simple, step by step method for coking the bird, trying to explain the great easiness with which this can be done.

“Did you buy a fresh turkey”, I asked, “or was it a frozen one?” “Frozen” was the reply.

“When did it thaw?” I asked.

“Thaw?”

I suggested he see if McDonalds was open and he could carry out burgers and fries.

I Dreamed I Saw Jackson Browne Last Night

OK, old folkies, I didn’t dream I saw Jackson Browne last night, I did see him! However, for the old folkies in the audience, the title relates to “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”, an IWW favourite.

What a fantastic evening! My wife and I were so pleased by an evening of great music, so well done, and by Jackson Browne on his “Solo Acoustic Tour”.

There he was, on stage with 17 guitars and a keyboard, to do an evening of music for devoted fans. Most of them were old, or at least gray haired, and as he said, his “songs were often from the 60’s, and if you remember the 60’s, you probably weren’t there”.

He has no set list as such, but makes it up as he goes along, as the spirit moves him. Fans screamed out song favourites for him to sing and he tried to cover what he could, and of course did a number of logical choices. The set included The Barricades of Heaven, Giving That Heaven away ,Jamaica Say You Will, Rosie, Don’t Let Us Get Sick and Life'll Kill Ya (Warren Zevon covers), For Everyman ,Sky Blue and Black, These Days ,Rock Me on the Water, Your Bright Baby Blues, In the Shape of a Heart ,Shaky Town, The Pretender, Running on Empty, Before the Deluge and some others I can’t remember.

I was moved emotionally, and went back in time to a degree. It was current and it was nostalgic all at the same time.

"If you’ve taken in one of Jackson Browne’s solo acoustic performances, you’re well aware of the distinct pleasure of that experience. A visceral energy fills the concert hall – an altogether different vibe than that of a show with a full band – where the audience is collectively invested and steeped in each song." Blog Critics

What a great musician! His guitar playing and his keyboard were wonderful, and he was first to admit that he forgot lyrics, screwed up verses and even had to work on tunes every now and then but after writing more than 170 songs, I think it would be easy to screw up. It’s the flaws and the stories that make it real!

Years ago he wrote a song, “Rosie”. I didn’t know it but texted my daughter Rosie to tell her about it as we were pleased. In the morning I sent the following email to my daughter, subject:

Obsession #1:

Rosie**** (Jackson Browne)

She was standing at the load-in when the trucks rolled up


She was sniffing all around like a half-grown female pup


She wasn't hard to talk to, looked like she had nowhere to go


So I gave her a pass so she could get in to see the show.


I sat her down right next to me and I got her a beer


While I mixed that sound on the stage so the band could hear


The more I watched her watch me play, the less I thought of to say


And when they walked offstage the drummer swept that girl away.


Chorus:


Rosie, you're all right, you wear my ring


When you hold me tight, Rosie, that's my thing


When you turn out the light I got to hand it to me


Looks like it's me and you again tonight, Rosie.


Well, I guess I might have known from the start she'd come for a star


But I told my imagination not to run too far


Of all the times that I've been burned, by now you'd think I'd learn


That it's who you look like, not who you are.


A few minutes later I sent the following email with a YouTube link subject: Obsession #2-


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOuWnlTJ7Y

Two minutes later I emailed my daughter the following, subject: Obsession #3-


I just listened to it and discovered this song is about masturbation! Forget the obsession!

Healthy Choices

So it’s the morning (a few days ago) and I come down to put away the dishes, make coffee and have some breakfast. My decision was to make something simple for myself, and a good healthy choice would be peanut butter on a toasted whole wheat pita. Not a problem.

As I went toi get the peanut butter I thought about it and realized that instead of getting my peanut butter from the cabinet, in the frig we have a natural peanut butter, crunchy and good, and it’s the kind that doesn’t separate but it has no additives. Great, I’ll go there.

My right arm is not working well since the fall I described last week, and I am teaching myself to be left handed while the healing process works. I reached into the frig for the peanut butter and moved the Kefir out of the way.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Kefir is a fermented milk drink that originated with shepherds of the North Caucasus region, who discovered that fresh milk carried in leather pouches would occasionally ferment into an effervescent beverage. It is prepared by inoculating cow, goat, or sheep's milk with kefir grains. Traditional kefir was made in skin bags that were hung near a doorway; the bag would be knocked by anyone passing through the doorway to help keep the milk and kefir grains well mixed.


When I moved the kefir it flew out of the fridge, hit the bottom ledge of the fridge, opened and spilled its contents all over the fridge and floor.

I stood there in terror. With bad knees, a bad arm and a wife who would wake up soon I scrambled around trying to figure a cleanup that would work.

When she finally came down, even though I did a pretty good job, I was stomped to death by her wrath. I had destroyed the kefir (like I cared) , I had created a giant mess (I did try and clean it up) and I must be suffering from some terminal disease because I keep dropping things which she continued to list as the time wore on. I had no comeback. I was sorry. I would go get more kefir. I will never try and eat anything healthy again.

I am eating “normal” peanut butter from now on which lives in a cabinet four feet off the ground, behind a door and in front.

Coming to Canada, Part 3 ...Citizenship

I've just spent an hour looking for the citizenship post when I realized, I don’t think I ever did it. While it seemed that it just occurred, and I remember writing about it, I think that it was an email, as the entire event happened in 2008, a year before I started this blog.

The road to citizenship was long, as we kept putting it off; it simply seemed like a lot of work. It really wasn’t until politics became interesting for us, and we realized that we wanted to participate, at least by voting, and as permanent residents we were denied that privilege.

Our permanent resident cards were about to end and we would have to reapply. That process was as much, if not more trouble. Our youngest daughter was born here and was a citizen by birth. If we became citizens before our oldest daughter became 18, she would be included in our application. We decided to go ahead with the application process.

It was a bit daunting, just gathering all the required information we needed to present to the government, but we could do it. The hardest part for me was gathering the information needed explaining when we left Canada, returned and where we had been each time in the previous five years. In fact, we all had different schedules some of the time, so it took some work, but we had old calendars and were able to piece it all together. We were already permanent residents so much of the other work had been done previously like fingerprinting and FBI checks for US citizens.

We carefully went through the process, and were prepared to take the written test. I practiced on line for a while but soon realized that my daughter was too young to have to take the test, I was too old to have to take the test and my wife was the only one qualified to take it. We teased her about it as she had to pass it for all three of us. She passed with flying colours! (note, Canadian spelling).

We were down to the final ceremony, and my youngest daughter came along to lend moral support and take photos.

The girls made sure I would do nothing to embarrass them, and call no attention to myself, for fear I’d do something terrible. The Citizenship Judge who performed the ceremony was Bob Morrow, the former mayor of Hamilton and someone I knew personally. He did a wonderful job, and things were going along just fine until he decided to focus on me and my family as examples of new citizens. It was a very nice presentation, but my daughters lost their anonymity and were not happy about the sudden attention.

The ceremony was beautiful, touching and all involved in the very full room were delighted and moved by their new status.

And yes Virginia, we have voted in every election since.

Coming to Canada Part 2

After a period of time living in Calgary on our emergency visa, it became imperative that we apply for Landed Immigrant Status (a term no longer used). On our emergency visa it was stated that my wife could not work, which was fine at the time as we had just had a second baby born in Calgary, and work was not an immediate issue. Also, our children could not attend public school, also not an immediate issue. However, we needed to clear up our status.

Using an immigration lawyer, we applied. The process was a bit complicated, however, all of these processes including citizenship which we achieved many years later, are complicated processes. My feeling was that as long as you were educated and spoke one of the official languages of the country, it was not daunting. However, we clearly were in a minority as very few of the immigrants we’ve seen and met have both spoken an official language and were educated.

After fees were paid and time moved on we received notice that we could enter Canada as Landed Immigrants. This was great news; however, we had to leave the country in order to enter. This was a questionable activity, and even though I questioned it, the answer was, we had to leave the country in order to enter.

Where do we go? We had to leave Canada. The answer became quite simple, simpler if we lived where we do right now as we could go to Niagara Falls, NY and return; however, we were in Calgary. We went off to Montana, our native land.

Three hours down the road with the kids, we landed across the border. We drove past Canadian Customs into Montana about 50 yards, and before we reached US Customs, we made a U-turn and went back to Canadian Customs (a very small building on the Alberta Montana border) and went in. We were the only car at the border at that moment. We were taken into a private room and filed our papers and got out border stamps etc., and were welcomed to Canada, the place we already lived. I think we had already eaten our lunch at Subway in rural Alberta, so celebration was three hours north back in Calgary.

These have all been memorable experiences, and I guess I’ll repost our citizenship event tomorrow or so, just to complete the journey.

Coming to Canada

There are a million stories for me in this huge move and adjustment in my life. So much happened to get us here and keep us here, and the road was paved with interesting stories, many of which I’ve told before in these posts.

Today I wanted to focus on my trip to the Consulate in New York. I can’t find it in the stories, although at 580+ it’s way too many to review with much care.

On our way here, one stop involved getting an entrance visa. I was set for an emergency visa so I could take over the office of President of the Alberta College of Art and Design, which had been without a leader for some time. The process itself would take a story or two but at this point I was beyond the initial interviews etc., and I was set to move. Timing was critical as my wife was 30 weeks pregnant and had to go or had to stay, there was no middle ground.

Everything was set! The lawyers for the school had arranged everything finally with the government, and all I had to do was get to New York,, on the appointed day, and in between the hours open for visas etc., and pay for my visa and pick it up.

I drove early out of Gloucester, MA, where I was temporarily living, and drove to Boston. Everything at my end was set up with landlord, movers, friends, storage, stuff in Calgary including a rented house and rented furniture and all I needed to do was this one, “simple” job.

I arrived at LaGuardia Airport at the appropriate time. I took a car into Manhattan and was dropped off near the Canadian Consulate at 1251 Avenue of Americas. The Consular Section receives the public Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 12 noon and 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., except for holidays but only received (at the time) visa applications between 9:00 and 12:00. So, I had to be there before they opened and be prepared to be in line.

I stood in a longish line at 9:00 and the offices opened. The staff was behind bullet proof glass here some 20 stories about the street, and spoke through 4” holes with metal microphones things, I guess, attached. It sounded a bit like Daffy Duck speaking to you and I imagine it was the same sound the other way.


There were an assortment of types all waiting to be served, and from the beginning there was a fuss, as it turns out the consulate only took exact change for anything, so if you didn’t have it with you, you had to go down an elevator and out to the street to find an answer to your problem within a three hour period as they close at noon on the button. Everyone was stressed and a man was going down the line trying to buy change from anyone, but everyone was afraid to sell him change for fear they wouldn’t have enough themselves.

When I finally reached Daffy Duck, I explained my situation, and he want to find my paperwork. This was a Friday and everything was arranged and if I had a problem there was no plan B. He found the papers, came back and asked a few questions, and then he told me to take a seat and wait; he’d get back to me. By then it was about 11:15.

At noon all the windows closed and everyone, including all workers and patrons seemed to leave. I was sitting there alone and waiting. Now I knew Canadians well enough at that point and had spent much time in Canada as a visitor, and they aren’t exactly like the typical New Yorker. If he said he’d be back, I guess he would be. Typical New Yorkers explained the bullet proof glass, but I sat quietly but was shaking inside.

At about 12:15 his window opened, he called me up, took my $21 (or something, what ever it was 17 years ago) and handed me my two visas for me and my wife and closed his window.


I was so excited and had no one to celebrate with. I took myself to a nearby Pizza Pronto, had a big slice of pepperoni, a diet coke, and sat and smiled.

I have no idea what would have happened if this had gotten screwed up. Planes, cars etc. got in the way but we made it through and the rest, as they say, has been history.