Truths and Half Truths

I Do The Dew

I love weekend mornings.

I used to love them because it was my only chance in the week to sleep in, but that's no longer true.  Because I don't work at a conventional job, and can set my own hours, I can pretty much get up when I please any day of the week.

Weekend mornings it pleases me to get up early.  No, earlier than that.  No, you're still not getting it.  I mean early.  Early enough to be the first ones off the first tee.

Today my alarm went off just before 5 A.M.  Actually, I was already stirring - had it not started chirruping on my bedside table, I'd have been awake by 5 anyway.

I got dressed, took Roxy out while my wife dragged her ass around getting ready  (I mean, seriously - curling your hair?  To golf?), then hopped in the car and headed off to the golf course.  It's on the North shore of my little Island, about ten minutes' drive from my back door, and no traffic that time of day.

(Not that there's ever much traffic.  As much as the Island is a tourist destination (our population more than triples in the summer), the worst traffic jam I ever run into happens when the farmer down the road leads his herd across the highway to graze in the field opposite his main pasture.  I must get a picture of that one day.  It's achingly quaint, and always amuses me to see a license plate from Massachusetts or Ontario or Pennsylvania stopped on the highway, waiting for a cattle drive to finish.)

I got to the golf course at the very first light.  I cannot tell you how breathtakingly beautiful it is on a  summer morning to stand on the first tee, the first few rays of sunlight turning the dew into scattered diamonds, the air so light and fresh and clean it feels like dawn of the first day ever.

The only tang in that air is the smell of newly mown grass.  It's one of my very favourite smells, and at that time of day, as the greenskeepers work feverishly to make the course immaculate, that smell is carried on even the slightest wisp of a breeze.

It's also early enough that the foxes are still on the prowl, eager to pounce on those odd, rolling eggs that seem to fall from the sky near them.  This morning, a mother fox darted out into the first fairway, chased down my wife's ball, and proudly pranced off into the woods with her prize.  I waited till she was long gone before I hit, because my wife uses a cheaper brand of balls than I, and the foxes seem to prefer the expensive balls. 

(Fox kits in the den:  "Oh, gross, Mom made Top-Flytes again!  Mo-o-o-o-m!  When can we have Titleists?  Reynard's mom feeds him Titleists!" 

"Well, if Reynard's mom let him run out into the middle of the road at 11:45 PM when Nils is tired and coming home from a gig and comes round a corner and sees a fox and swerves to miss it and barely does, and then his heart is pounding at like 300 beats per second and if you could take the adrenaline that's now coursing through his system, blow it out his nose, and cut it with baking soda, you could sell it on the street for like $300 a gram ...  would you follow?"

"Well, yeah.  We're foxes.  That's what we do."

"Shut up and eat your Pro Staffs.")

The birds are up early, too, of course.  All manner of shore birds, songbirds, larks, robins, finches, and of course, the crows.  (In fact, on the Island, that time of day is named for them :  "crow piss".  As in "Jaysus, you look tired tonight, me son.  Where've you been to?"  "Oh, I was up at crow piss to get out on the golf course.")

I get up so early because I love golfing at that time of day - I feel alive and filled with energy and positive and focused.  I can play my shots, and take a moment to look around and drink in the incredible beauty around me, and still leave the rest of the golfers in my dust and finish the round in 2 1/2 hours.  All in all, a perfect start to the day - I come home, relax on my deck with a Diet Coke, and I'm at peace with the world.

All These Words Are In English, And None Make Any Sense to Me

From the BBC, this report on a big cricket match between England and (I think) Australia:

"Glenn McGrath outshone the earlier exploits of Steve Harmison to leave England's reply in tatters on day one of the first Ashes Test at Lord's.

McGrath took all five of the wickets to fall in a horrific hour for England following tea after Australia had earlier been bowled out for 190.

The veteran seamer took his Test tally to 504 wickets as England collapsed on what looked a lively pitch.

Harmison's 5-43 had earlier appeared to be the most telling contribution."


I keep reading and re-reading, hoping to somehow stumble across the code.  But it isn't there.

Personally, I'm becoming convinced that cricket reports are a sophisticated joke played by the Brits on the rest of the world: 

"No, no, Augie.  This is funnier:  Say "Leeds youthful half-fielder, Basil Thrumptonsongin, took seven of ten horse wobbles to finish 171 up with 94 retired after tea."

"Ohh, brilliant, Simon!  Then we'll say:  "This cleared the way for Northampton's veteran double torch scrum liner, Leonard Seffington-Hubble,  to charge 43 bowls cleared at Westchester on three googlies and a cropper.""

"No!  That's so saucy!  Do you imagine the North Americans would believe that?"

"Oh, absolutely.  I hear they actually run the reports in their - now, don't laugh - sports pages."

"They never!  Even the parts where we say the match broke for tea?  Surely they must have figured out it was all a hoax ...?"

"Honestly, I don't think so.  I mean, truly, they still think "Spotted Dick" is a food."

"God, no wonder the Spice Girls were so popular."

Behold The Wise and Powerful Nilbo

Hey, I went into this knowing they would dress me however they saw fit, and willing to play along.  When you go in with that attitude, you get what you get ... and I got this:

Note the bandana (or what we on the Canadian Prairies used to call a "babuschka")  (it's a real word, it's Ukranian, you can check); the shawl (covering my not-so-Potterish Tommy Bahamas golf shirt); and the curious red lightning-bolt-shaped scar on my vast expanse of forehead.

The crystal ball was trippy - when you touch it, blue electrical arc lines shoot out from the centre core to match your fingertips.  And you can flip a switch (all switches and cords hidden, of course) to make it voice-sensitive.  Might not fool adults every time.  But a kid who is willing to suspend disbelief?  Oh, for sure.

So I took up my place, and the line formed.  Some were younger kids with their mom and dad in tow, some were teenagers, and even young adults.  There was a collection of young women - performers in a musical theatre troupe - who came by to experience the amazing insights of the Wise and Powerful Nilbo.

I had an absolute hoot.  Turns out, I'm pretty good at this fortune teller stuff.

I've totally figured out how they do it.  A kid would sit down and I'd ask them their name, and look them over carefully.  Then I'd say "Put your fingertips on the crystal ..."

The kid would do that, and I'd touch the crystal, then snatch my hand away.  Then I would cautiously put it back on, clearly concerned about the powerful flow of mind energy she was transferring to me.

"Emily," I would say.  "Do you ... have four legs?"

"No," she scoffed.

"But I'm getting ... a powerful message .. four legs .. four legs ... wait .. do you have a pet?

Eyes fly open, quick look to Mom.  "Yes ... I do ... !"

"I see that ... it's ... a ... cat ..."  (puzzled look)  "Or .. no .. it doesn't like cats .. it's ... a dog!"

"Yes!"  Now she's in the palm of my hand.

"You feed your dog ... treats.  Like ... biscuits, don't you?"

"Yes!"  She is clearly amazed that I have been able to divine this information from simply a touch of her hand.

"There are two kinds of bicuits ... red ones .. and .. sort of green ones ..."

"Yes!"  (Of course there are ... duh.  Milkbones.)

"Well, Emily ... your dog wants me to tell you that ... she prefers the red ones."

A gasp.  "Yes!  She does!"

And so on.  It was absolutely hilarious for me, and I have to say, I left some amazed kids in my wake.  There were four girls in their late teens - the musical theatre kids - and one of them was very skeptical. 

"I see .. an injury ..."  I said.  (Well, duh. Dancers are always getting injured.  It's a safe bet.)

"No, not really," she said.  (OK, missed on that.  But she was a teenaged girl.  What's a sure bet...?)

"No, not a bodily injury," I said.  "This was ... internal ... your heart got broken ..."

Heeheehee.  Bingo.  All the skepticism gone.

So, OK, I didn't really tell the future.  I'm not that kind of visionary.  I'm .. a peripheral visionary.  I can't see into the future.  But I can see really well off to the sides ....

Do You Believe In Magic?

This is my daughter Erin, on our recent trip to England, rushing to catch a train:

When we got back home, she fell back into her job at a local bookstore called The Bookmark.  She loves it there - both of my daughters grew up with a love for books and reading that makes me feel that, somewhere along the line, we didn't entirely screw up.  Erin's sister Allison is in her third year in Honours English at University, a talented writer and a voracious reader.  Erin opted for a degree in Music, and in the fall will begin her teaching career somewhere on the Island, but for now, she adores working in a place where people come to find nourishment for their souls.

She called me yesterday, because tonight there's a teensy little event going on in the book world:  the release of the latest in the Harry Potter series.  Her store has taken over the Food Court in our downtown mall, and at 10:30 the doors open and kids and parents will swarm in.  There are all sorts of special events planned for the time between opening and midnight (when the books go on sale), all of them themed around the series.  She asked if I wanted to volunteer to be part of it all - they need a Fortune Teller. 

"We have a costume for you, and a ball that gives off electical impulses when you touch it, and I know you don't really like OPC (Other Peoples' Children), Dad, but if you would just consider it ... "

Hell, yeah, I'll do it.

So, tonight, I'll be there, in the belly of all the hoopla, reading fortunes.  Not sure exactly how that will work.  My temptation is to screw with their heads.  "I see ... wait .. I see .. a job .. it's a .. government job.  Filing.  No, wait ... not filing ... purchasing office goods.  I see a thirty year career of dragging yourself out of bed to grind out eight hours of thankless work in total obscurity, followed by an early retirement buyout.  By then, your loveless marriage will have ended in betrayal, recriminations, a restraining order and finally a divorce, and you will live out your remaining days alone in a squalid studio apartment, trying desperately to feed yourself and three cats on an inadequate pension.  Okay, so ... candies and hot dogs are over by the big raven!  Enjoy the evening!   NEXT!"

But I probably won't.  Probably.

I don't know why I don't resent all the Harry Potter hype.  I tend to get all cynical and eye-rolly and dig my heels in and try to find reasons to hate anything surrounded by this much blather.  Maybe it's just because - unlike Jessica Simpson, or Britney and Kevin, or so many others who are the current darlings of Access Hollywood - in this case, most of the hype is deserved.  You can't hate the books, not if you're a literate person.  They're exceptionally well crafted, story-driven books and if the hype wasn't there, they'd still sell like hotcakes. 

Any parent has seen how a young kid reviews a story that's being read to them.  Politeness and delicacy is for pussies.  My kids would physically strip the book from my hands and throw it across the room. 

"No!" they would say.  "Steam Shovel!"  And I would sigh and go to the shelf and get down "Mike and the Steam Shovel", which in addition to being mind-numbingly boring for an adult was also the longest children's book ever written, and the hardest to read without making a tiny error, missing one goddamn word, and god forbid you ever did that because if you did, even rolled over a word just a bit too fast so that she thought you missed it, she would immediately call a halt to the whole exercise and you By God had to start the story again, from the top.

But Harry Potter books are terrific.  I can't wait to read this one.  It's a great series, and writers secretly want to resent J.K. Rowling for stumbling onto a perfect idea at a perfect time and going from scribbling her chapters down in a coffee house in Edinburgh to having lunch with the Queen, and being able to say (had she wanted to), "So, this whole "Richest Woman In the U.K. Thing" ... how did you handle it?  Because I have to say, since I took over, it's been alright." 

But we can't.  All we can say is "Man ... that's one tape measure home run she hit.  Maybe, one day ..."

So, if you want your fortune told, come on down.  Or ask a question in the Comments section.  By the power vested in me by J.K. Rowling, I'll do my best to see into your future.  Or at least, give you a clue about your present.

Style First, THEN Substance ... As With The Rest Of My Life

So, once I got the new look, I decided to bite the bullet and update my damn links.  I have a few (well, substantially more than a few) blogs I visit every day.  Some I visit time and time again during the day. 

I don't use an RSS compiler - although I have one - because to me, part of the fun is doing the rounds.  Sometimes I go in order, sometimes I just click randomly.  Every one is a delight and a surprise.

I invite you to discover and revel in this collection of great writers, quirky personalities, oddballs, smart-asses, and just plain smart folks.  Personal taste being what it is, I don't expect you'll love every one.  But they're all different, they're all part of every day for me, and I'm happy to share.

On the right, and scroll down to "Cool Blogs".  After that, you're on your own.

It's Not As Good As Arrest ...

... but I was bored and they have some new colours and ... well, hell.  What does everybody think?

OK ... Now, THIS Is Cool

Recently, Google released a FREE beta version of Google Earth, a satellite imagery program that lets you zoom in on almost anyplace in the world from outer space.  You can:                

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

		Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.
		Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.
		Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.
		Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

It ... well, it totally rocks, is all I can say.  Of course, it's a black hole of time wastage for someone like me - I spent a good hour zipping around, looking in backyards around the world.   It's mind-boggling. 

Want to look down on exactly where I'm sitting as I type this?  All you do once the program is installed is click on the "Fly to" tab and enter "Charlottetown, Canada".  It actually takes you on a virtual flight to Charlottetown.  Then you use the cursor to scroll to these co-ordinates:  46 degrees, 18' 54.76" N. by 63 degrees 09' 06.22" W. 

Or even easier (and thanks to Suburban Misfit for this tip):  just type in my geographic co-ordinates in this format: 46 d 18' 54.76" N , 63 d 09' 06.22" W

Or my address:  747 Brackley Point Road, Charlottetown, PE, Canada C1E 1Z3  (I thought about the wisdom of putting my address into my blog, but figured what the hell - if someone can use a computer, they can find me easily enough anyway).

Anyway, type in any of those ... and there I am.  I'll wave.  You can pretend you're a bird and drop something on the roof of my car.  See how well I'm maintaining my lawn.  Have a look at where I go snowshoeing out back.  It's just ... cool.

You can use the wheel on your mouse to zoom in closer, although things start to get pixillated once you get past a certain point. 

But at its clearest, you can make out the three trees along my driveway, the shape of my roof, the lighter attached area (which is my deck), the grey roof of my workshop/ garage, even (if you know what to look for) the picnic table at the top left corner of my parking area.  Here's an image, taken from a height of about 700 feet:

What are your co-ordinates?  Leave a message or e-mail me ... and I'll come for a visit.  Leave your curtains open.

Grace? No.

Last month we were in London.  I was touring in the U.K. and during a break in the schedule we jumped on a train and I got to show my daughters the city I'd fallen in love with from the first moment I'd laid eyes on it.

They were wide-eyed and thrilled as we set out to explore - it's so exciting, so alive, filled with places you read about and see in movies and dream about visiting.

Here they are, my two gorgeous girls, drinking in the experience as we rode the double decker bus ...

And today, the images of another bus in that beautiful city, shattered and shredded ...

It's so clear in my mind, so recent.  I can hear my girls laughing, see them pointing at landmarks, quivering in anticipation at what might be around the next turn. 

On that bus this morning, there will have been commuters, thinking about their upcoming work day.  Tourists eager to get an early start to see Westminster Abbey or The Tower.  Mothers with kids, out to do some early morning shopping.  I can hear the sounds, see their faces.

We were there a month ago.  I feel tempted to say "There, but for the Grace of God ..."

But there is no grace in this.  None.

Happy Canada Day!

This is one of my favourite days of the year.

This is an amazing country.  She is achingly beautiful.  I feel truly blessed to have seen so much of her, and hope to see so much more.

If I were given my choice of where to sink my roots, this would be it.  She's all I want and so much more ...