Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2011-24

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IN THIS ISSUE

• Geoff Goodship takes pictures of one of his favourite flowers
• Catherine Nesbitt describes a crime scene in Vancouver
• Carol Dilworth writes about poems suitable for weddings
• Mike Yeager owes a debt of gratitude to two men he remembers
• Don Henderson forwards a number of pithy sayings
• Sites are recommended by Gerrit deLeeuw, Jay, and Pat Moore

Geoff Goodship, who is still recovering from the results of his injury a year and a half ago, writes about

GUERNSEY CREAM

One of the side effects of the recovery stage is boredom. To shake it, I took my camera into the back garden yesterday.

Among the weeds there is spinach, lettuce, asparagus, garlic, rhubarb, raspberries, and boysenberries. Oh yes, and seven tomato plants too. The asparagus has been particularly good this year.

Nothing looked photogenic, however, so I moved to the front garden.

I have admired a spectacular late spring blossom in a friend´s garden for many years. I tried starting shoots, but the effort was abandoned. After only a few days we found a handsome two-foot version of the same plant at a reasonable price, saving us at least one growing season. It´s a clematis: a particular species with the elegant name of "Guernsey Cream". I haven´t been outside much in the last three weeks, so it was a bit of a surprise to see it flourishing.

The white four- to six-inch blossoms are at their best at this time of year. The photo to the right is of Guernsey Cream in a pot beside the garage door. I built a frame for it to creep up two years ago. The photo does a poor job of revealing the height, which is about seven feet. It also doesn´t show the foliage creeping around the corner to the south wall of our home.

Wikipedia provides no help with the origin of the name. It has a dairy-related image.

Guernsey Cream begins her annual growth with shiny green shoots that quickly form thin leaves. It´s only a few days till they fill out, complete with saw-tooth edges. Almond-shaped flower buds the size of a thumbnail follow in a matter of days. It flowers twice a year, once dramatically in mid-spring, and again in the fall more sporadically until the frost sets it back. We followed the expert advice when planting: "full sun but shaded roots."

Large white blossoms invite religious comparisons with Easter lilies. I prefer to visualize a jug of fresh Guernsey cream. The word "simplicity" also comes to mind. And is there something celestial about that centre whorl?

Catherine Nesbitt describes

HER BRUSH WITH CRIME IN DOWNTOWN VANCOVER

A few months ago we were visiting a friend who lives in downtown Vancouver, very close to St. Paul´s hospital. This was a regular square-dance evening, with six other friends.

Around 8 p.m. we heard three shots. I mistook them for a car backfiring, but everyone else knew immediately what the sounds were. One of our group happened to be looking out a window on the sixth floor, and saw someone hobbling, as rapidly as he could manage, from our building shrubbery to somewhere across the street. She could not tell whether this was a victim or an aggressor.

When we left for home, just after 9 p.m., the entire block was closed to traffic and was crowded with policemen, their official cars, ambulances, etc. We were told that someone had been shot, but not whether he had died. The next day we learned from the newspaper that the injured man had been located in a near-by Subway cafe. I don´t remember finding out whether or not the crime was drug-related - but I assume it was.

This episode shook my complacency - my feeling that "those dangerous things won´t happen to me," in spite of the daily newspaper accounts of crime in Vancouver. Our friend´s condo is in a very attractive, nicely landscaped building, with lots of foot traffic on the streets at all times. We felt very safe around there, until this event.

However, the memory has receded and I feel sanguine again. There is no way to predict the possible appearance of an angry person with a gun, no matter where one lives.

Carol Dilworth has been researching

POEMS FOR WEDDINGS

I have a relative who was born on Friday the 13th. When you get past the "What?", "OMG!" and other generally unhelpful expressions, it makes perfect sense. Just like February 29, December 25, January 1, September 11: life happens every day of the year.

This relative is now in her mid twenties and very much in love with her partner. I wondered why they weren´t engaged and then it happened: on a Friday the 13th last year. On Facebook, she exulted "two times lucky!" I still wasn´t picking up the thread, wondered if I would be invited to the wedding, and wished that someone would tell me the date so that I could ink it in.

That is why I know that the only Friday the 13th in 2011 occurred in May.

Maybe it was because I had just returned from that wedding that a poem in The Guardian resonated with me: Constantine Cavafy´s "Ithaca". I had never heard of Cavafy and this was a real gift to me. I read it several times and then posted the link to my Facebook page. And today another bonus. I found The Complete Poems of Cavafy, Expanded Edition, introduction by W.H. Auden, for $5.00 at the world´s best secondhand bookstore, Macondo Books in Guelph.

To hear Sean Connery read "Ithaca", go to http://arunaurl.com/49ld

An English friend posted that his choice of a poem for a wedding would be "The Wedding at Berrico" by Les Murray (http://arunaurl.com/ 49le)

Yes, that is also wonderful. I wonder how many fathers of the bride could get through it dry-eyed. And an interesting choice for an Englishman! Recently the English chose Philip Larkin´s "The Whitsun Weddings" as their all-time favourite English poem. You can hear Larkin read the poem athttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eTF6QNsxA

But "The Whitsun Weddings" is probably not appropriate for the ceremony itself as it´s from the perspective of a distant observer. If you need more ideas for the Great Day, try this:http://arunaurl.com/49lf

Can you imagine the results if Canadians were asked for their favourite Canadian poem? I certainly can´t think of one for a wedding (assuming that Margaret Atwood´s fishhook and eye image is highly inappropriate.) What would your answer be?

From Mike Yeager´s blog at www.aretiredboomer.blogspot.com, here is his tribute to two influential men in his life:

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

The other day I was thinking about a couple of people I never got a chance to thank, but would have liked to. One was my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Atkins, and the other was Bob Hope.

I narrowly missed an opportunity to thank Mr. Atkins when my friend Paul and I went back to Ferguson in 2002. We walked around the old neighborhood and then over to Lee Hamilton Elementary School, which we both attended in the fifties. School had just let out, and as soon as the kids left the building, we got a chance to go in and talk to some of the staff. When I asked about Mr. Atkins, the secretary told me he had died recently. She said he spent his whole teaching career at the school, and that he had been retired for a number of years.

I don´t remember anything specific Mr. Atkins said to me, except that at a time when I was having trouble in school, he made me feel like I had great potential and could do anything I put my mind to. I was a poor student as a kid and at times, a nervous wreck. In the sixth grade, my anxiety about school became so bad my parents took me out of public school and placed me in a private one. But I had no problems in Mr. Atkins´ fifth grade class.

When the secretary told us about his recent death, it hit me that sometime during my life I could have at least sent him a letter or a card. He was right there at Lee Hamilton School the whole time, I´m sure helping kids feel better about themselves. I hope some of them made the effort to thank him.

I don´t think Bob Hope needed my thanks. He was arguably the most popular entertainer in the world for many years and he received numerous awards. I know there are and have been thousands of veterans like me who feel immense gratitude toward him. The love and concern he felt for the men and women fighting America´s wars was genuine and it came through in the shows he put on for the troops. He said once that his greatest honor was becoming an honorary veteran.

I recently read one of his autobiographical books called, "Don´t Shoot, It´s Only Me". It was about his show business career with the focus on the USO shows for military personnel. It all started in May 1941, when he was asked to take his popular radio show to March Field and perform live for the Army soldiers. He said at first he resisted the idea, but eventually was talked into it. This was before Pearl Harbor and our involvement in WWII. He realized early that these men and women were desperate for familiar sounds and sights from home and what they needed more than anything was to laugh. For that first show, he brought along Ray Milland, but soon realized the men in the audience wanted to see girls. So he started bringing along popular starlets of the time. He states in the book, "We represented everything those new recruits didn´t have: home cooking, mother, and soft roommates."

From that very first show Hope felt he had been transported to comedy heaven. Even mediocre jokes got big laughs. After one so-so joke he comments, "The laughter was so loud I had to look down to see if my pants had fallen." After returning to the civilian audiences, "...the memory of the generous laughter at March Field haunted me." He was hooked.

He headlined more than 69 USO tours over a span of 50 years, taking his troop to Europe and all over the islands of the Pacific during WWII, later to Korea during the war, and then to Vietnam. He even did shows for the troops during the first Gulf war. His entourage had many close calls, but this only seemed to make him more determined to continue bringing shows to the fighting men and women. He started calling the soldiers and sailors he entertained, "my kids" even though at the time, he wasn´t much older.

I got the opportunity to see the show in Chu Lai, Vietnam, Christmas of 1967. My buddies and I took a cooler full of beer and drove up Highway 1 to the Americal Division Headquarters outdoor amphitheater. We were pretty far in the back, but the acoustics were good, so we didn´t miss a thing. This 1967 Christmas tour was made into a documentary film and can be viewed on YouTube at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzOsLRT7d5c.

He had four women performers with him that year: Raquel Welch, Barbara McNair, Elaine Dunn, and Miss World, whom he introduced by saying, "I just wanted you to remember what you´re fighting for." Also with him was Phil Crosby, one of Bing´s sons. Some of his jokes were about Bing, and you could tell how highly he valued their friendship. This was the first overseas show without his lifelong friend, the comedian Jerry Colonna. The music was provided by Les Brown and his Band of Renown. Bob characterized himself as a big chicken and made jokes about how scared he was when the firing started or the bombs fell. We all laughed uproariously at these jokes, not daring to admit to our fellow soldiers that we were all just as scared much of the time.

On that tour, Hope and his troop did shows at 22 bases in 15 days. Some of Bob´s jokes were specific to each area they were in and that included Chu Lai. These were the jokes that got the biggest laughs. At the time, much of the country was against the war and it was hard for us to think about the lack of support at home. For a little while anyway, Bob Hope´s USO show countered all those feelings. They closed the show with Barbara McNair leading us all in the singing of "Silent Night". I know there wasn´t a dry eye in the audience.

I consider this show to be one of the highlights of my life. Watching parts of it on YouTube now, my appreciation certainly wasn´t because it was the best entertainment I´d ever seen. The music was mostly from the previous generation. And I didn´t realize at the time that Raquel Welch doesn´t sing or dance very well. She was out-performed by Elaine Dunn and Barbara McNair, who were great entertainers. But Raquel was probably the biggest hit because she looked so hot in her skimpy blue and white knit mini-dress. I know that´s what I remember most from the show. The guys in the photography section of our Intelligence detachment took pictures of her from all angles, blew them up, and made quite a bit of money selling them to other soldiers and sailors. Indeed, she represented what we were all fighting for.

So I wish I could have thanked Bob and Mr. Atkins, two men who made me feel cared about at two very stressful times of my life.

Don Henderson reminds us of these

PITHY SAYINGS

Accept the fact that some days you´re the pigeon and some days you´re the statue!

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

If you can´t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

Never buy a car you can´t push.

Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won´t have a leg to stand on.

Nobody cares if you can´t dance well. Just get up and dance.

Since it´s the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

The second mouse gets the cheese.

When everything´s coming your way, you´re in the wrong lane.

Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are sharp, some are pretty, and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colours, but they all have to live in the same box.

A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Save the earth ... it´s the only planet with chocolate!

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Jay forwards the URL for an illuminating video of Carl Sagan explaining his cosmic calendar:

You may have already seen this video recommended by Gerrit deLeeuw, because it is whizzing around the internet with the speed of light. It is worth watching twice, however:

Marilyn Magid suggests this animated feature which pits the animator against his creation:

Pat Moore sends link to what is called "geriatric dirty dancing," but which is actually a display of remarkable dancing by an older couple:

For the first in a series of lectures by Richard Dawkins about growing up in the universe, go to

"Freeganism" is a movement that believes in minimizing waste, and using what we already have. As a matter of principle, they collect good food out of the dumpsters of retailers, residences, offices, and restaurants. This is not just for freaks or homeless people. Meet an employed college professor who´s been doing this for 30 years - and teaching his students to follow suit:

In this Ted Talk, Kunstler explores the tragedy of America´s suburban environment. Before the recession, the real estate collapse, the never-ending wars and the bankruptcy of governments everywhere, most people didn´t worry too much about the forces behind the suburban lifestyle: howquickly it may become impossible to maintain or how challenging it would be to retrofit.

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to