Last evening I burned Joseph Conrad. I burned Victory, Under Western Eyes and two Lord Jim‘s. I burned others. I burned Treasure Island, The Mayor of Casterbridge and the best of 17th and 18th century English literature anthologized. I burned Brontes. I burned them in a barrel. Out back of the farmhouse. House cleaning for house selling. The VISA statements burned as it they never were. My early 1990’s tax returns refused to burn. I coaxed them on to the hottest coals. I wanted to find some Atwood to burn. I will look again as the barrel will glow again tomorrow evening.
Category: Me and Mine
Kołobrzeg! Kołobrzeg!
When looking through the web stats, I got to wondering why, outside of North America, Holland would be the hotbed of the greatest number of my readers when I realized it is the Google effect. Having used the word Nederlands and therefore been linked by a few Dutch blog trolling spiders or bots or whatever they are, I get a bit of a boost on Dutch Google and, bob’s your uncle, I stand tall in the low countries. So…can this be manufacturered?
My wife and I met in Kołobrzeg, a resort city on the Baltic Coast of Poland where the Nazis met a well-deserved, nasty fate at the hands of the Red Army on the beaches after running out of both land and options in the spring of ’45. The ever patient Ellen and I both taught ESL there and, unlike most others who travelled to Eastern Europe to teach a decade or so ago, briefly enjoyed a rather splendid if corney luxury lifestyle – Bulgarian wines, tinned elk and boar, first walkman in the province, at $400 a month an income 3 times that of a doctor. A sense of the place can be seen in some of its websites for a sanitorium/spa, a hotel/spa, spa-tourism, spa-fishing-poets, spa-investment, yacht-spa, people at the spa town…I suppose I could go on…Anyway, this is an open invite for discussion of all things Kołobrzeg. What the hell.
PS – if your computer shows a small raised “3” between the two o’s of the name, it is spelled Kolobrzeg with a little bar across the “L” kinda pronounced “e-u”: “Ł” or “ł”
[Update in 2016: proof of the finding of Kay…]
RTJ on Father’s Day
Two little voices were on the phone at noon to wish me a happy Father’s Day from PEI where they are helping get the house ready for sale. They gave their gift in calling after my morning nap, required after a visit from my pal, now a teacher in Scarborough, Arthur (aka Art, Uncle Artie, RTJ or Tree – depending on the era of our now 22 year old friendship we are describing and the number of ales having been tasted.)
We started Kings together in 1981, he suffering from the bad luck of sharing common keys with our room, the room Wugg and I shared in Chapel Bay. Suffered in having us from time to time creeping in, lifting the bed where he lay between drunk and hung to two feet off the floor, dropping it as we screamed “wake up”. Rather than wallowing in glory days, we we toured the downtown pubs Merchant McLaim, Pilot House and the Kingston Brew Pub and talked about soccer, family and, well, some old friend talk . Home by taxi at a sensible hour watching a MLS game on Fox Sports World. Highlight – smoked cod battered and fried at the Pilot House with a Guinness.
Photo above: Not us but still… two at the Brew Pub to be admired for their foresight.
Owen Sound
On the road writing from the Owen Sound Library here on the shores of Georgian Bay. Not as grand a trip as this or this but you do what you can. It’s Grannie-in-law’s 87 and, as she has been a mad hockey fan since before she attended the opening night of Maple Leaf Gardens, it is a good time to be among the caring and knowledgeable given Ottawa’s loss of last night. Mrs. Penny is a cousin to Ken and Dave Dryden [1st,R1], Winnipeg and Ranger’s Murray Murdoch [3rd], Winnipeg and Leafs’ Andy Blair [1st] – who got her Leafs tickets throughout the 30’s – and the Syl Appses Sr. [2nd], Jr.[2nd,R1], III [2nd,R2] and the up and coming Gillian [2nd,R2] all via the one but mi’chty Dryden clan [of which Peter Rukavina is a member and suffers from my fifth cousin in law status.] EP knows her stuff.
Owen Sound is as perfect a small city as I have ever seen. A park in the middle where the river splits the town. A small working port with a car ferry to the North Shore of Lake Huron. A diversity of churches including a corner lot for the Christian Scientists where formerly Lutherans and Temperance Unionists met. An OHL team and a great farmer’s market where I should be now buying asparagus for the pah-tay.
PS: Did I tell you she and I did B-52’s on the night the Blue Jays won the World Series? And she supports the Blue Bombers in the CFL.